Autumn Poems

The Pasture by Robert Frost

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;

I'll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):

I sha'n't be gone long.---You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf

That's standing by the mother. It's so young

It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

I sha'n't be gone long.---You come too.

Hoeingby John Updike

I sometimes fear the younger generation will be deprived

     of the pleasures of hoeing;

     there is no knowing

how many souls have been formed by this simple exercise.

The dry earth like a great scab breaks, revealing

     moist-dark loam----

     the pea-root's home,

a fertile woulnd perpetually healing.

How neatly the green weeds go under!

     The blade chops the earth new.

     Ignorant the wise boy who

has never performed the simple, stupid, and useful wonder.

Leisure by W. H. Davies

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

Not time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

The Cow in Apple Time by Robert Frost

Something inspires the only cow of late

To make no more of a wall than an open gate,

And think no more of wall-builders than fools.

Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools

A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,

She scorns a pasture withering to the root.

She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten

The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.

She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.

She bellows on a knoll against the sky.

Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.