Robert Frost

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."

"Where had I heard this wind before Change like this to a deeper roar?What would it take my standing there for,Holding open a restive door,Looking down hill to a frothy shore?Summer was past and day was past. Somber clouds in the west were massed. Out in the porch's sagging floor,leaves got up in a coil and hissed,Blindly struck at my knee and missed. Something sinister in the tone Told me my secret must be known:Word I was in the house alone Somehow must have gotten abroad,Word I was in my life alone,Word I had no one left but God."

"Fragmentary Blue Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly,Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)--Though some savants make earth include the sky;And blue so far above us comes so high,It only gives our wish for blue a whet."

"Two such as you with such a master speed Cannot be parted nor be swept away From one another once you are agreed That life is only life forevermore Together wing to wing and oar to oar"

"I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down."

"A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with."

"GATHERING LEAVESSpades take up leaves No better than spoons,And bags full of leaves Are light as balloons. I make a great noise Of rustling all day Like rabbit and deer Running away. But the mountains I raise Elude my embrace,Flowing over my arms And into my face. I may load and unload Again and again Till I fill the whole shed,And what have I then?Next to nothing for weight,And since they grew duller From contact with earth,Next to nothing for color. Next to nothing for use. But a crop is a crop,And who's to say where The harvest shall stop?"

"A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain."

"To be a poet is a condition, not a profession."

"We ran as if to meet the moon."

"The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued."

"The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness."

"Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire,I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice."

"Poetry is what gets lost in translation."

"The rain to the wind said,You push and I'll pelt.'They so smote the garden bed That the flowers actually knelt,And lay lodged--though not dead. I know how the flowers felt."

"Nor is there wanting in the press Some spirit to stand simply forth,Heroic in it nakedness,Against the uttermost of earth. The tale of earth's unhonored things Sounds nobler there than 'neath the sun;And the mind whirls and the heart sings,And a shout greets the daring one."

"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

"God made a beauteous garden With lovely flowers strown,But one straight, narrow pathway That was not overgrown. And to this beauteous garden He brought mankind to live,And said "To you, my children, These lovely flowers I give. Prune ye my vines and fig trees, With care my flowers tend,But keep the pathway open Your home is at the end."God's Garden"