A Boy’s Will. Robert Frost

a leaf that lingered brown,

      Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,

      Comes softly rattling down.

      I end not far from my going forth

      By picking the faded blue

      Of the last remaining aster flower

      To carry again to you.

      Stars

      How countlessly they congregate

      O’er our tumultuous snow,

      Which flows in shapes as tall as trees

      When wintry winds do blow!—

      As if with keenness for our fate,

      Our faltering few steps on

      To white rest, and a place of rest

      Invisible at dawn,—

      And yet with neither love nor hate,

      Those stars like some snow-white

      Minerva’s snow-white marble eyes

      Without the gift of sight.

      Storm Fear

      When the wind works against us in the dark,

      And pelts with snow

      The lower chamber window on the east,

      And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,

      The beast,

      ‘Come out! Come out!—

      It costs no inward struggle not to go,

      Ah, no!

      I count our strength,

      Two and a child,

      Those of us not asleep subdued to mark

      How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,—

      How drifts are piled,

      Dooryard and road ungraded,

      Till even the comforting barn grows far away

      And my heart owns a doubt

      Whether ‘tis in us to arise with day

      And save ourselves unaided.