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For Once, Then, Something

1 June 2023

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Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs 

Always wrong to the light, so never seeing 

Deeper down in the well than where the water 

Gives me back in a shining surface picture 

Me myself in the summer heaven godlike 

Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. 

Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb, 

I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, 

Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, 

Something more of the depths—and then I lost it. 

Water came to rebuke the too clear water. 

One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple 

Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, 

Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness? 

Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.  

More Books by Robert Frost

25
Articles
Best Poems of Robert Frost
5.0
Collection of most famous poems of Robert Frost, a famous english writer.
1

The Road Not Taken

8 April 2023
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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 t

2

Nothing Gold Can Stay

8 April 2023
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 Nature’s first green is gold,  Her hardest hue to hold.  Her early leaf’s a flower;  But only so an hour.  Then leaf subsides to leaf.  So Eden sank to grief,  So dawn goes down to day.  Nothi

3

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

8 April 2023
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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.        My little horse must think it q

4

Birches

10 April 2023
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 When I see birches bend to left and right  Across the lines of straighter darker trees,  I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.  But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay  As ice-storms

5

Mending Wall

20 April 2023
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 Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,  That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,  And spills the upper boulders in the sun;  And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.  The work of hunte

6

Tree At My Window

20 April 2023
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 Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me. Vague dream head lifted out of the ground, And thing

7

After Apple-Picking

31 May 2023
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My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree  Toward heaven still,  And there's a barrel that I didn't fill  Beside it, and there may be two or three  Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

8

The Death of the Hired Man

31 May 2023
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Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table  Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,  She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage  To meet him in the doorway with the news  And put him on

9

The Gift Outright

31 May 2023
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The land was ours before we were the land’s.  She was our land more than a hundred years  Before we were her people. She was ours  In Massachusetts, in Virginia,  But we were England’s, still colo

10

Mowing

31 May 2023
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There was never a sound beside the wood but one,  And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.  What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;  Perhaps it was something about the heat o

11

The Pasture

31 May 2023
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I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;  I'll only stop to rake the leaves away  (And wait to watch the water clear, I may):  I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.     I'm going out to fetch t

12

Range-finding

31 May 2023
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The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung  And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest  Before it stained a single human breast.  The stricken flower bent double and so hung.  And still the bird re

13

The Aim Was Song

1 June 2023
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Before man came to blow it right       The wind once blew itself untaught,  And did its loudest day and night       In any rough place where it caught.     Man came to tell it what was wrong:   

14

The Census-Taker

1 June 2023
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I came an errand one cloud-blowing evening  To a slab-built, black-paper-covered house  Of one room and one window and one door,  The only dwelling in a waste cut over  A hundred square miles roun

15

Dust of Snow

1 June 2023
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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.  

16

For Once, Then, Something

1 June 2023
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Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs  Always wrong to the light, so never seeing  Deeper down in the well than where the water  Gives me back in a shining surface picture  Me myself in

17

Good-by and Keep Cold

1 June 2023
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This saying good-by on the edge of the dark  And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark  Reminds me of all that can happen to harm  An orchard away at the end of the farm  All winter, cut off

18

Love and a Question

1 June 2023
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A Stranger came to the door at eve,     And he spoke the bridegroom fair.  He bore a green-white stick in his hand,     And, for all burden, care.  He asked with the eyes more than the lips     F

19

October

1 June 2023
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O hushed October morning mild,  Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;  Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,  Should waste them all.  The crows above the forest call;  Tomorrow they may form and go.  O

20

Christmas Trees

2 June 2023
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The city had withdrawn into itself  And left at last the country to the country;  When between whirls of snow not come to lie  And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove  A stranger to our ya

21

Fire and Ice

2 June 2023
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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

22

Home Burial

2 June 2023
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He saw her from the bottom of the stairs  Before she saw him. She was starting down,  Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.  She took a doubtful step and then undid it  To raise herself and

23

Fragmentary Blue

2 June 2023
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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, p

24

‘Out, Out—’

2 June 2023
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The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard  And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,  Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.  And from there those that lifted eyes coul

25

The Sound of Trees

2 June 2023
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I wonder about the trees.  Why do we wish to bear  Forever the noise of these  More than another noise  So close to our dwelling place?  We suffer them by the day  Till we lose all measure of pa

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