Then whether from mistaken courtesy

And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether

From hope of hearing good of what was mine,

I said, “There aren’t enough to be worth while.”

“I could soon tell how many they would cut,

You let me look them over.”

“You could look.

But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”

Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close

That lop each other of boughs, but not a few

Quite solitary and having equal boughs

All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,

Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,

With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”

I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.

We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,

And came down on the north.

He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!––at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:

“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant

To let him have them. Never show surprise!

But thirty dollars seemed so small beside

The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents

(For that was all they figured out apiece),

Three cents so small beside the dollar friends

I should be writing to within the hour

Would pay in cities for good trees like those,

Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools

Could hang enough on to pick off enough.

A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!

Worth three cents more to give away than sell,

As may be shown by a simple calculation.

Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.

I can’t help wishing I could send you one,

In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

“But I ask,

What are you seeing out the window, lady?”

“What I’ll be seeing more of in the years

To come as here I stand and go the round

Of many plates with towels many times.”

“And what is that? You only put me off.”

“Rank weeds that love the water from the dish-pan

More than some women like the dish-pan, Joe;

A little stretch of mowing-field for you;

Not much of that until I come to woods

That end all. And it’s scarce enough to call

A view.”

“And yet you think you like it, dear?”

“That’s what you’re so concerned to know! You hope

I like it. Bang goes something big away

Off there upstairs. The very tread of men

As great as those is shattering to the frame

Of such a little house. Once left alone,

You and I, dear, will go with softer steps

Up and down stairs and through the rooms, and none

But sudden winds that snatch them from our hands

Will ever slam the doors.”

“I think you see

More than you like to own to out that window.”

“No; for besides the things I tell you of,

I only see the years. They come and go

In alternation with the weeds, the field,

The wood.”

“What kind of years?”

“Why, latter years––

Different from early years.”

“I see them, too.

You didn’t count them?”

“No, the further off

So ran together that I didn’t try to.

It can scarce be that they would be in number

We’d care to know, for we are not young now.

And bang goes something else away off there.

It sounds as if it were the men went down,

And every crash meant one less to return

To lighted city streets we, too, have known,

But now are giving up for country darkness.”

“Come from that window where you see too much for me,

And take a livelier view of things from here.

They’re going. Watch this husky swarming up

Over the wheel into the sky-high seat,

Lighting his pipe now, squinting down his nose

At the flame burning downward as he sucks it.”

“See how it makes his nose-side bright, a proof

How dark it’s getting. Can you tell what time

It is by that? Or by the moon? The new moon!

What shoulder did I see her over? Neither.

A wire she is of silver, as new as we

To everything. Her light won’t last us long.

It’s something, though, to know we’re going to have her

Night after night and stronger every night

To see us through our first two weeks. But, Joe,

The stove! Before they go! Knock on the window;

Ask them to help you get it on its feet.

We stand here dreaming. Hurry! Call them back!”

“They’re not gone yet.”

“We’ve got to have the stove,

Whatever else we want for. And a light.

Have we a piece of candle if the lamp

And oil are buried out of reach?”

Again

The house was full of tramping, and the dark,

Door-filling men burst in and seized the stove.

A cannon-mouth-like hole was in the wall,

To which they set it true by eye; and then

Came up the jointed stovepipe in their hands,

So much too light and airy for their strength

It almost seemed to come ballooning up,

Slipping from clumsy clutches toward the ceiling.

“A fit!” said one, and banged a stovepipe shoulder.

“It’s good luck when you move in to begin

With good luck with your stovepipe. Never mind,

It’s not so bad in the country, settled down,

When people’re getting on in life. You’ll like it.”

Joe said: “You big boys ought to find a farm,

And make good farmers, and leave other fellows

The city work to do. There’s not enough

For everybody as it is in there.”

“God!” one said wildly, and, when no one spoke:

“Say that to Jimmy here. He needs a farm.”

But Jimmy only made his jaw recede

Fool-like, and rolled his eyes as if to say

He saw himself a farmer. Then there was a French boy

Who said with seriousness that made them laugh,

“Ma friend, you ain’t know what it is you’re ask.”

He doffed his cap and held it with both hands

Across his chest to make as ’twere a bow:

“We’re giving you our chances on de farm.”

And then they all turned to with deafening boots

And put each other bodily out of the house.

“Goodby to them! We puzzle them. They think––

I don’t know what they think we see in what

They leave us to: that pasture slope that seems

The back some farm presents us; and your woods

To northward from your window at the sink,

Waiting to steal a step on us whenever

We drop our eyes or turn to other things,

As in the game ‘Ten-step’ the children play.”

“Good boys they seemed, and let them love the city.

All they could say was ‘God!’ when you proposed

Their coming out and making useful farmers.”

“Did they make something lonesome go through you?

It would take more than them to sicken you––

Us of our bargain. But they left us so

As to our fate, like fools past reasoning with.

They almost shook me.”

“It’s all so much

What we have always wanted, I confess

It’s seeming bad for a moment makes it seem

Even worse still, and so on down, down, down.

It’s nothing; it’s their leaving us at dusk.

I never bore it well when people went.

The first night after guests have gone, the house

Seems haunted or exposed. I always take

A personal interest in the locking up

At bedtime; but the strangeness soon wears off.”

He fetched a dingy lantern from behind

A door. “There’s that we didn’t lose! And these!”––

Some matches he unpocketed. “For food––

The meals we’ve had no one can take from us.

I wish that everything on earth were just

As certain as the meals we’ve had. I wish

The meals we haven’t had were, anyway.

What have you you know where to lay your hands on?”

“The bread we bought in passing at the store.

There’s butter somewhere, too.”

“Let’s rend the bread.

I’ll light the fire for company for you;

You’ll not have any other company

Till Ed begins to get out on a Sunday

To look us over and give us his idea

Of what wants pruning, shingling, breaking up.

He’ll know what he would do if he were we,

And all at once. He’ll plan for us and plan

To help us, but he’ll take it out in planning.

Well, you can set the table with the loaf.

Let’s see you find your loaf. I’ll light the fire.

I like chairs occupying other chairs

Not offering a lady––”

“There again, Joe!

You’re tired.”

“I’m drunk-nonsensical tired out;

Don’t mind a word I say. It’s a day’s work

To empty one house of all household goods

And fill another with ’em fifteen miles away,

Although you do no more than dump them down.”

“Dumped down in paradise we are and happy.”

“It’s all so much what I have always wanted,

I can’t believe it’s what you wanted, too.”

“Shouldn’t you like to know?”

“I’d like to know

If it is what you wanted, then how much

You wanted it for me.”

“A troubled conscience!

You don’t want me to tell if I don’t know.”

“I don’t want to find out what can’t be known.

But who first said the word to come?”

“My dear,

It’s who first thought the thought. You’re searching, Joe,

For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.

Ends and beginnings––there are no such things.

There are only middles.”

“What is this?”

“This life?

Our sitting here by lantern-light together

Amid the wreckage of a former home?

You won’t deny the lantern isn’t new.

The stove is not, and you are not to me,

Nor I to you.”

“Perhaps you never were?”

“It would take me forever to recite

All that’s not new in where we find ourselves.

New is a word for fools in towns who think

Style upon style in dress and thought at last

Must get somewhere. I’ve heard you say as much.

No, this is no beginning.”

“Then an end?”

“End is a gloomy word.”

“Is it too late

To drag you out for just a good-night call

On the old peach trees on the knoll to grope

By starlight in the grass for a last peach

The neighbors may not have taken as their right

When the house wasn’t lived in? I’ve been looking:

I doubt if they have left us many grapes.

Before we set ourselves to right the house,

The first thing in the morning, out we go

To go the round of apple, cherry, peach,

Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook.

All of a farm it is.”

“I know this much:

I’m going to put you in your bed, if first

I have to make you build it. Come, the light.”

When there was no more lantern in the kitchen,

The fire got out through crannies in the stove

And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling,

As much at home as if they’d always danced there.

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig’s having lashed across it open.

I’d like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.