Robert Frost

Love at the lips was touch

As sweet as I could bear;

And once that seemed too much;

I lived on air

We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?

Do we know any better where we are,

And how it stands between the night tonight

And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?

How different from the way it ever stood?

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

The birds that came to it through the air

At broken windows flew out and in,

Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh

From too much dwelling on what has been.

The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight;

New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil.

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

How often already you've had to be told,

Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below.

I have to be gone for a season or so.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

Do you know,

Considering the market, there are more

Poems produced than any other thing?

No wonder poets sometimes have to seem

So much more businesslike than businessmen.

Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.

Now no joy but lacks salt,

That is not dashed with pain

And weariness and fault;

I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark

Of almost too much love,

The sweet of bitter bark

And burning clove.

And then we saw him bolt.

We heard the miniature thunder where he fled,

And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and gray,

Like a shadow across instead of behind the flakes.