Robert Frost's poem:9

19.Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast

In a field I looked into going past,

And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,

But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it - it is theirs.

All animals are smothered in their lairs.

I am too absent-spirited to count;

The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness

Will be more lonely ere it will be less -

A blanker whiteness of benighted snow

WIth no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars - on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.



20.Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth

Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --

Assorted characters of death and blight

Mixed ready to begin the morning right,

Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --

A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,

And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

What brought the kindred spider to that height,

Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall?--

If design govern in a thing so small.



21. Neither Out Far Nor In Deep


The people along the sand

All turn and look one way.

They turn their back on the land.

They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass

A ship keeps raising its hull;

The wetter ground like glass

Reflects a standing gull

The land may vary more;

But wherever the truth may be--

The water comes ashore,

And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.

They cannot look in deep.

Btu when was that ever a bar

To any watch they keep?