The Hill Wife

by Robert Frost

　　

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LONELINESS(Her Word)One ought not to have to careSo much as you and ICare when the birds come round the houseTo seem to say good-bye; Or care so much when they come backWith whatever it is they sing;The truth being we are as muchToo glad for the one thing As we are too sad for the other here––With birds that fill their breastsBut with each other and themselvesAnd their built or driven nests.HOUSE FEARAlways––I tell you this they learned––Always at night when they returnedTo the lonely house from far awayTo lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,They learned to rattle the lock and keyTo give whatever might chance to beWarning and time to be off in flight:And preferring the out- to the in-door night,They learned to leave the house-door wideUntil they had lit the lamp inside.THE SMILE(Her Word)I didn’t like the way he went away.That smile! It never came of being gay.Still he smiled––did you see him?––I was sure!Perhaps because we gave him only breadAnd the wretch knew from that that we were poor.Perhaps because he let us give insteadOf seizing from us as he might have seized.Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,Or being very young (and he was pleasedTo have a vision of us old and dead).I wonder how far down the road he’s got.He’s watching from the woods as like as not.THE OFT-REPEATED DREAMShe had no saying dark enoughFor the dark pine that keptForever trying the window-latchOf the room where they slept. The tireless but ineffectual handsThat with every futile passMade the great tree seem as a little birdBefore the mystery of glass! It never had been inside the room,And only one of the twoWas afraid in an oft-repeated dreamOf what the tree might do.THE IMPULSEIt was too lonely for her there,And too wild,And since there were but two of them,And no child, And work was little in the house,She was free,And followed where he furrowed field,Or felled tree. She rested on a log and tossedThe fresh chips,With a song only to herselfOn her lips. And once she went to break a boughOf black alder.She strayed so far she scarcely heardWhen he called her–– And didn’t answer––didn’t speak––Or return.She stood, and then she ran and hidIn the fern. He never found her, though he lookedEverywhere,And he asked at her mother’s houseWas she there.Sudden and swift and light as thatThe ties gave,And he learned of finalitiesBesides the grave.

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