 |
|
Home: Poetry: Robert Frost: The Mountain
| THE MOUNTAIN |
-
a poem by Robert Frost
-
- THE mountain held the town as in a shadow
- I saw so much before I slept there once:
- I noticed that I missed stars in the west,
- Where its black body cut into the sky.
- Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall
- Behind which I was sheltered from a wind.
- And yet between the town and it I found,
- When I walked forth at dawn to see new things,
- Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields.
- The river at the time was fallen away,
- And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones;
- But the signs showed what it had done in spring;
- Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass
- Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark.
- I crossed the river and swung round the mountain.
- And there I met a man who moved so slow
- With white-faced oxen in a heavy cart,
- It seemed no hand to stop him altogether.
- "What town is this?" I asked.
- "This? Lunenburg."
- Then I was wrong: the town of my sojourn,
- Beyond the bridge, was not that of the mountain,
- But only felt at night its shadowy presence.
- "Where is your village? Very far from here?"
- "There is no village--only scattered farms.
- We were but sixty voters last election.
- We can't in nature grow to many more:
- That thing takes all the room!" He moved his goad.
- The mountain stood there to be pointed at.
- Pasture ran up the side a little way,
- And then there was a wall of trees with trunks:
- After that only tops of trees, and cliffs
- Imperfectly concealed among the leaves.
- A dry ravine emerged from under boughs
- Into the pasture.
- "That looks like a path.
- Is that the way to reach the top from here?--
- Not for this morning, but some other time:
- I must be getting back to breakfast now."
- "I don't advise your trying from this side.
- There is no proper path, but those that have
- Been up, I understand, have climbed from Ladd's.
- That's five miles back. You can't mistake the place:
- They logged it there last winter some way up.
- I'd take you, but I'm bound the other way."
- "You've never climbed it?"
- "I've been on the sides
- Deer-hunting and trout-fishing. There's a brook
- That starts up on it somewhere--I've heard say
- Right on the top, tip-top--a curious thing.
- But what would interest you about the brook,
- It's always cold in summer, warm in winter.
- One of the great sights going is to see
- It steam in winter like an ox's breath,
- Until the bushes all along its banks
- Are inch-deep with the frosty spines and bristles--
- You know the kind. Then let the sun shine on it!"
- "There ought to be a view around the world
- From such a mountain--if it isn't wooded
- Clear to the top." I saw through leafy screens
- Great granite terraces in sun and shadow,
- Shelves one could rest a knee on getting up--
- With depths behind him sheer a hundred feet;
- Or turn and sit on and look out and down,
- With little ferns in crevices at his elbow.
- "As to that I can't say. But there's the spring,
- Right on the summit, almost like a fountain.
- That ought to be worth seeing."
- "If it's there.
- You never saw it?"
- "I guess there's no doubt
- About its being there. I never saw it.
- It may not be right on the very top:
- It wouldn't have to be a long way down
- To have some head of water from above,
- And a good distance down might not be noticed
- By anyone who'd come a long way up.
- One time I asked a fellow climbing it
- To look and tell me later how it was."
- "What did he say?"
- "He said there was a lake
- Somewhere in Ireland on a mountain top."
- "But a lake's different. What about the spring?"
- "He never got up high enough to see.
- That's why I don't advise your trying this side.
- He tried this side. I've always meant to go
- And look myself, but you know how it is:
- It doesn't seem so much to climb a mountain
- You've worked around the foot of all your life.
- What would I do? Go in my overalls,
- With a big stick, the same as when the cows
- Haven't come down to the bars at milking time?
- Or with a shotgun for a stray black bear?
- 'Twouldn't seem real to climb for climbing it."
- "I shouldn't climb it if I didn't want to--
- Not for the sake of climbing. What's its name?"
- "We call it Hor: I don't know if that's right."
- "Can one walk around it? Would it be too far?"
- "You can drive round and keep in Lunenburg,
- But it's as much as ever you can do,
- The boundary lines keep in so close to it.
- Hor is the township, and the township's Hor--
- And a few houses sprinkled round the foot,
- Like boulders broken off the upper cliff,
- Rolled out a little farther than the rest."
- "Warm in December, cold in June, you say?"
- "I don't suppose the water's changed at all.
- You and I know enough to know it's warm
- Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm.
- But all the fun's in how you say a thing."
- "You've lived here all your life?"
- "Ever since Hor
- Was no bigger than a----" What, I did not hear.
- He drew the oxen toward him with light touches
- Of his slim goad on nose and offside flank,
- Gave them their marching orders and was moving.
| "The Mountain" is reprinted from North of Boston. Robert Frost. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1915. |
BACK TO ROBERT FROST INDEX
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
