Hemlock Wall

by Frances Frost

36 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1929

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[M.W.P.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Afternoon


This I've kept
Of an afternoon:
The air was chill
And the light went soon.

I sat on a rail fence
Weathered to black,
A thorn tree pricking
Against my back.

All I could see
On either hand
Were withered fields
And a patch of sand

And one bare slope,
Grass-starved and thin,
That held a cat-tail
To the wind.

This I've kept
Of an afternoon:
The sun scooped up
In a pewter spoon,

And a silent crow,
On a lone cat-tail,
That stared at the thing
On the top fence-rail.

* * *

Hemlock Wall


There was a wall here,
Shutting in
Grass that young calves
Nibbled thin.

It kept without,
As a good wall should,
A footloose hemlock
Escaped from the wood.

But the hemlock roots
Crept stealthily under,
The young calves yearned
For the next field's plunder.

One bright day
When folks were in town,
The calves jumped over
And the wall fell down.

* * *

Choice


You may keep you brave and brilliant hours
Washed, as the white sands are, by turquoise tides.
You may keep your strange, exotic flowers
And crags that lift their heaving, purple sides
Against a somber moon. Give me instead
A gaunt New England hillside, whose bleak bones
Hold certain hollows tilted to my head.
Give me the touch of lichen that loves stones,
The raucous cries of crows above a field,
The harsh and stinging tang of spruce-tree bark -
For something in me craves the sterner yield
Of a land whose very blossoming is stark.

* * *

Walk Before Storm


Something was there in the maple-thicket
More than the quivering scarlet leaves.
Part of me listened, and part of me wondered
Why man couldn't gather the red in sheaves
And fill up his house for his winter's warming.
I stood on the path while the light turned chrome,
Heart thumping my ribs with a frightened warning
That something unseen was in sight and call,
And I'd better stop staring and go along home
If I intended going at all.

* * *

Capture


My feet are tethered to painted floors,
My hands concerned with pewter and brass,
(But there is a knocking at all the doors
And a pale-green wind in the doorstep grass.)

Under my ribs lift tattered cries
Where only a guarded heart should be.
(I broke a dish when I shut my eyes
Against the sun in a plunging tree.)

There is a knocking at each tall door
And the ivory inside panels are scarred:
(I have been beating my knuckles sore
while night blew down and the hills were starred.)

I am the keeper of wall and sill,
I kneel on the hearth to a tempered fire:
(Flesh that was wild can learn to be still,
But what of a heart that was born to briar?)

* * *

The Inarticulate


I laid my forehead on a rock
Ice-floods had chiseled deep and broken,
And suddenly I was aware
The inarticulate had spoken.

I heard what frantic fires were loosed
In boulders, now stern-locked and narrow,
What blazing yields were flung from stone,
Burned out to black and long unfallow.

I learned the agony of ice,
The gaunt despair of granite clinging
To orchard slope and hill and field,
Beneath a dark hawk's carven winging.

I laid my forehead on a sun
Spent and frozen, scarred and broken.
By my stone heart I was aware
The inarticulate had spoken.

* * *

Bread for Two Hungers


He who seeks
to gain his bread
From a green
Field harvested

Two breads will find him:
One to feed
His body's want,
Hid body's need,

And one, that tasted,
Is a spur,
And eaten, leaves
Him hungrier.

* * *

Poem for Barrenness


Woods that are stripped of blossom and of leaf
Thus should remain. Let autumn winds blow under
And through and over, taking to their grief
All that still lingers there of scarlet plunder.
When there is barrenness on twig and bough,
Then let that naked darkness feel no cover
Of snow that drifts and clings and teaches how
Trees may grow beautiful for any lover -
Spring or the silent cold. Better to go
All winter bleak and bare and never know
What quaint seduction lurks within the snow.

* * *

Spring Song


Trees are weaving
The warp and woof
Of singing shadow
To make my roof.

Boughs are setting
Twig to leaf
For a cloak to cover
The twilight's grief.

Frail grey fingers
In every tree
Shut curious stars
Away from me,

And I am given
A secret place
Wherein to hide
My heart and face.

But back and forth
From one to the other,
Trees are designing
A greater cover -

Trees are spinning
With delicate pain
A cloud of birds
To keep out the rain.

* * *

Uncharted


There are no charts of these old road and hills
Save in the minds of men who trod them down
Throughout a lifetime of small journeyings
From barn to pasture and from barn to town.
There is no map to tell where orchards crouch
Or wild trees drop scant fruit upon the earth,
Where cool spring-water starts, what walls are strong,
Which field has proved seed the black soil starts,
These things are clear as their own deep-ploughed hearts.

* * *

White Woods


Because he knew the way woods are
And the way of snow,
In the early morning after a storm,
He'd go
And sneak in on the pines as if
He thought
To catch them up to something, like
As not.

He must have found a meaning there
In the bend boughs
And the sift of snow across his face
When the wind browsed:
For once, they say, he mentioned to
His wife
He'd be a judge of whiteness all
His life.

* * *

Fare


A field may give of timothy
Or winter corn or wheat.
A field has varied harvesting
Whereof a man may eat.

A heart may likewise be fair ground
For seed-time ploughs to carve,
And yield but husk and shriveled stalk
Whereof a man may starve.

* * *

Prone


In some forgotten crevice of a hill
That I have climbed through crow-dark woods to find,
There will be rest a moment and the still
Brushing of close-drawn boughs across my mind.

There will be tang of needles and of leaf;
The low, brown, curving wind will stir and rise
To coil about the dreams that shadowy, brief
Fingers of fir have pressed upon my eyes.

* * *

Comfort


Will you go to a valley to be comforted?
Will you walk with bowed head
Down through the meadows to the river-bank,
Watching the swift black water and the lank
Rushes that bend in the wind, and wondering
If drowning one's self is thought too great a sin?

You may take the valley if you will,
But I shall take a hill
And climb, bruising my heart on thorn
And brambles, tasting the forlorn
Bitterness of grass-root. I shall lift my head
At the cry of trees and so be comforted.
Only the hills have known
Dark scars of stone.

* * *

Pause


Winter is standing still a little while
And looking down
On grey-traced woods, on brown hills,
On the brown
Wither of fields. These things brood darkly, wait
In silence. They know
In another day, in another hour, will come
The certainty of snow.

* * *

Solace to a Stranger


Yes, these roads can be trusted.
They go so far
And no farther, and you may hunger
For any star
You want to, or any distant
Beckoning hill,
But the roads will keep your feet in them
Sober and still.

These roads are not the kind that
Set a man wild
With wishing he'd been born a
Journey-man's child.
Whether they lead to the pasture
Or cross-road store,
They always come carefully home to
Your own back door.

* * *

Loss


The trees that drop their apples
With a muffled sound -
Red and yellow apples
On matted yellow ground, -
They must dread the hour
When weighted boughs let fall
The coloured fruit, the curved fruit,
Beside a stony wall.

But the trees that lost their apples
In the early windy year -
Hard-cheeked little apples,
Round and green and clear, -
They have nothing more to lose
And nothing more to fear.

* * *

Lullaby


Earth and I,
Earth and I
Are setting our lips to a lullaby,
For spring has come
And the sowing's over -
April, April, who was your lover?
At the full of the moon, who was your lover?

My step is slow
And my heart is slow
And the child turns in my flesh and sleeps.
Spring has gone
And the growing's past,
And the time for the harvest is here at last -
Who reaps you, Earth, who reaps?

The days are yellow,
The nights are blue,
The ripened fruit drops down from the tree.
Child-limbs wait
At my body's gate
And the sickle of pain moves over me.

Earth and I,
Earth and I
Are setting our lips to a lullaby.
A long wind glides
In the fallen clover
And Earth and I remember a lover. . . .
Sleep, baby, sleep!

* * *

Remnants of Green


After bird-passage and the windy going
Of each barbaric leaf,
There is a sudden sternness on the mountain,
There is a sudden harsh and flinty grief.

After the vanished wing, the vivid blowing,
Colour of hemlock cries
Alone along high ridges, giving solace
To gaunt-ribbed pastures where the dead year lies.

* * *

White Boy


Grow, white boy! Grow tall, grow slender,
Let your pale flesh brown
In sun, your hair blown wild, blow backward, -
Run the fierce wind down!

Grow, white boy! Let child-limbs harden,
Know the flanks of hills
Pressed to your length, and the slide of water
Behind abandoned mills.

Grow, white boy! Drink deep of living,
Deeper yet of mirth,
For there is nothing better than laughter
Anywhere on earth!

* * *

Expedition


The path across the slopes -
The sumac then
And blackberry briars caught it,
Narrowed it; again

It dwindled, almost lost
In goldenrod.
So stifled a path must be
But rarely trod.

For two who follow it
It promised more
Than death in goldenrod.
They saw its core

Emerge and widen, leap
Into the wood:
It turned to spattered sun
From where they stood.

The black, unhurried crow
That trekked above
Beheld the path was theirs
By right of love.

* * *

Deserted Orchard


They have given the orchard back to itself again,
And left it to huddle, untended
Under the hill, companioned by only a fence
That never was mended.

The dead boughs twist and slant in the bloom of the year.
White petals drift and scatter
With no one to measure the coming yield or to think
That apples matter

In a year or a life. But the orchard puts forth its fruit,
And in time the apples tumble,
Slice open and crush on a stone or smother in grass.
A man might stumble

On meanings here, as well as on orchard hummocks.
With even the fence uncaring,
The trees will blossom and yield until petals are ended
And ended the bearing.

* * *

Wood-Lot Hill


Every winter
The woods shrink back.
Every winter
The white sledge-track
Grows longer, reaches
Across the hill
To hungry axes
Splintering chill
Silence, hurling
Tree-trunks down
To crash black boughs
Against the ground.

Some spring there will
Be nothing left..
The hill will huddle,
Bare, bereft,
Stump-scarred, to watch
The thawed-out road -
Where they took down
The last long load.

* * *

Late Afternoon


The snow was falling softly when she came
To the edge of the slope and saw the blurred grey sky
Reach down to somber pines. No sumac-flame
Beside the path this time: she snowshoed by
Dark leafless clumps and ghosts of goldenrod,
Following the hush that called her from the wood,
Finding in whiteness deep on leaves and sod
A soundlessness she somehow understood.

The wood seemed waiting for the falling snow,
Breathless and still and lovely in its sure
Welcoming of further white, and so
She found a beauty she could not endure.
Her quick hand shut her eyes out from the sight:
The woods would take the kiss of snow all night.

* * *

Hands


I have held my hands to the rain,
Cupped silver wet and cool.
Rain over, I have dipped bright water
From a mountain-shadowed pool.

I have plunged my hands in loam,
Felt the after-sunset cold
Creep through furrows, cling to fingers
Suddenly grown old.

I have cupped my heart to the earth,
Beauty has burned my eyes.
Only my hands remember the cold,
Only my hands are wise.

* * *

Descent


She was never very sure
That utter silence would endure
Below the earth, for she had heard
Stillness broken by a bird
In rainy lilac-trees, and known
The silence of a sullen stone
Shattered by a cricket's wing.
Quiet was a doubtful thing,
She said, and staunch in her believing,
Went down to prove her self=-deceiving.

* * *

Reason


Let the high winds scorch or freeze -
I can meet them as I please.
Let the grass go black with rust -
I can mow it if I must.
Let trees snap - I can require
Trunk and bough and twig for fire
To warm my hands and warm my soul
That still is unafraid and whole.

Let day turn night - I shall not care.
Though a red sun stalk and snare
Where a pallid moon should be,
It will not unreason me.
Though stars be nails to crucify
My flesh to earth, I need not cry.
I can meet life as I will,
And meeting death, I can be still.

* * *

Transition


This mountain which was plangent with the sharp
And scarlet cries
Of trees that turn to mutiny and madness
Whenever autumn dies,
Is quiet now. The mountain-side, that burned
Its heart out in the slow
And russet afternoons, has gone the way
All mountains go -
Barren and bleak with purple loneliness,
Pine-dark and cold,
It shoulders silence while the dwindle hours
Are counted, told.

* * *

Skeptic


With cool, ironical content,
He watched the clash of seed and soil.
Incuriously, with slow intent,
He set his hands and back to toil.

He watched earth labour and give forth;
Unshaken, he delivered her,
And measured each field's double worth
In terms of crop and thistle-burr.

Let yield be fair, he smiled. Let weeds
Be plentiful, he laughed and took
Two handsful of his next-year's seeds
And scattered them upon the brook,

Insisting earth had no desire
For planting other than her own
Which brought, from shoots, hill-maple fire,
And star-moss out of pastured stone.

* * *

Carnal


Brain that colour shuttled through
One day will be quiet,
Glacial darkness enter in
Where was ache and riot;

Heart that shook its prison bars,
Though yet confined, be still,
Blind to twilight-fingers drawn
Across the wooden hill;

Feet that followed underbrush
Early year and late,
Be set forever on a road
Narrow, dark and straight;

And sun-brown flesh go down to lie
Gleamless, beauty-bare,
Till bladed hand again shall grasp
The blue and amber air.

* * *

Dare


The wood's-edge thicket holds a path
Twisty enough for any seeker
Of thorny ways, and hides a thrush,
And offers shelter to the bleaker
Crow-calls. But it is a dare,
And if you're one whom brambles shake
To fright, best go the long way round
Or find another road to take.

* * *

Ending


This much he felt,
This he knew -
That there'd be always
Work to do:

Cattle to milk
And feed and tend,
Fields to harvest,
Fences to mend,

Trees to fell
And draw and chop,
Crows to scare,
And blight to stop,

Potatoes to dig,
Butt-nuts to find,
And doors to shut
In heart and mind.

* * *

Cover


Red leaves flutter,
Yellow leaves fall,
Brown leaves gather
Along a wall.

Brown leaves huddle
Against the grey
Stones some farmer
Set one way

Between two pastures.
Curled leaves keep
Any wall warm
When winter's deep.

* * *

Old Lover


Some day I shall turn valleyward again.
And there will be long meadows for my walking,
And there will be a hill to climb where sky
Will silence all my laughter and my mocking.

I shall feel again the tug of thorn, the ships
Of branches lashed against my face, the shaking
Drench of rain from darkly silvered trees,
And there will be wild, bitter fruit for taking.

And I shall stand, some cool, late afternoon,
Facing the hills, feet in the tarnished, bending
Meadow. I shall think of lost beginnings
And I shall think of a most certain ending.

On my right hand will be a ruined sun,
On my left hand a mountain-moon will hover,
And I shall plunge face-down to the grasses
And taste the quiver of my final cover.