"""
Poems by Robert Frost.
"""
ROBERT_FROST = {
    'The Road Not Taken':
    '''
    TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
    And sorry I could not travel both
    And be one traveler, long I stood
    And looked down one as far as I could
    To where it bent in the undergrowth;

    Then took the other, as just as fair,
    And having perhaps the better claim
    Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
    Though as for that, the passing there
    Had worn them really about the same,

    And both that morning equally lay
    In leaves no step had trodden black.

    Oh, I marked the first for another day!
    Yet knowing how way leads on to way
    I doubted if I should ever come back.


    I shall be telling this with a sigh
    Somewhere ages and ages hence:
    Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
    I took the one less traveled by,
    And that has made all the difference.
    ''',

    'My November Guest':
    '''
    My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
    Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
    Are beautiful as days can be;
    She loves the bare, the withered tree;
    She walks the sodden pasture lane.


    Her pleasure will not let me stay.

    She talks and I am fain to list:
    She's glad the birds are gone away,
    She's glad her simple worsted grady
    Is silver now with clinging mist.


    The desolate, deserted trees,
    The faded earth, the heavy sky,
    The beauties she so ryly sees,
    She thinks I have no eye for these,
    And vexes me for reason why.


    Not yesterday I learned to know
    The love of bare November days
    Before the coming of the snow,
    But it were vain to tell he so,
    And they are better for her praise.
    ''',

    'The Door in the Dark':
    '''
    In going from room to room in the dark,
    I reached out blindly to save my face,
    But neglected, however lightly, to lace
    My fingers and close my arms in an arc.

    A slim door got in past my guard,
    And hit me a blow in the head so hard
    I had my native simile jarred.

    So people and things don't pair any more
    With what they used to pair with before.
    ''',

    'Fire and Ice':
    '''
    Some say the world will end in fire,
    Some say in ice.

    From what I've tasted of desire
    I hold with those who favour fire.

    But if it had to perish twice,
    I think I know enough of hate
    To say that for destruction ice
    Is also great
    And would suffice.
    ''',

    'Gathering Leaves':
    '''
    Spades take up leaves
    No better than spoons,
    And bags full of leaves
    Are light as balloons.


    I make a great noise
    Of rustling all day
    Like rabbit and deer
    Running away.


    But the mountains I raise
    Elude my embrace,
    Flowing over my arms
    And into my face.


    I may load and unload
    Again and again
    Till I fill the whole shed,
    And what have I then?

    Next to nothing for weight,
    And since they grew duller
    From contact with earth,
    Next to nothing for color.


    Next to nothing for use.

    But a crop is a crop,
    And who's to say where
    The harvest shall stop?
    ''',

    'Acceptance':
    '''
    When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
    And goes down burning into the gulf below,
    No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
    At what has happened.
    Birds, at least must know
    It is the change to darkness in the sky.

    Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
    One bird begins to close a faded eye;
    Or overtaken too far from his nest,
    Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
    Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.

    At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
    Now let the night be dark for all of me.

    Let the night bee too dark for me to see
    Into the future.
    Let what will be, be.
    ''',

    'Maple':
    '''
    Her teacher's certainty it must be Mabel
    Made Maple first take notice of her name.

    She asked her father and he told her, "Maple—
    Maple is right.
    "
    "But teacher told the school
    There's no such name.
    "
    "Teachers don't know as much
    As fathers about children, you tell teacher.

    You tell her that it's M-A-P-L-E.

    You ask her if she knows a maple tree.

    Well, you were named after a maple tree.

    Your mother named you.
    You and she just saw
    Each other in passing in the room upstairs,
    One coming this way into life, and one
    Going the other out of life—you know?
    So you can't have much recollection of her.

    She had been having a long look at you.

    She put her finger in your cheek so hard
    It must have made your dimple there, and said,
    'Maple.
    ' I said it too: 'Yes, for her name.
    '
    She nodded.
    So we're sure there's no mistake.

    I don't know what she wanted it to mean,
    But it seems like some word she left to bid you
    Be a good girl—be like a maple tree.

    How like a maple tree's for us to guess.

    Or for a little girl to guess sometime.

    Not now—at least I shouldn't try too hard now.

    By and by I will tell you all I know
    About the different trees, and something, too,
    About your mother that perhaps may help.
    "
    Dangerous self-arousing words to sow.

    Luckily all she wanted of her name then
    Was to rebuke her teacher with it next day,
    And give the teacher a scare as from her father.

    Anything further had been wasted on her,
    Or so he tried to think to avoid blame.

    She would forget it.
    She all but forgot it.

    What he sowed with her slept so long a sleep,
    And came so near death in the dark of years,
    That when it woke and came to life again
    The flower was different from the parent seed.

    It carne back vaguely at the glass one day,
    As she stood saying her name over aloud,
    Striking it gently across her lowered eyes
    To make it go well with the way she looked.

    What was it about her name? Its strangeness lay
    In having too much meaning.
    Other names,
    As Lesley, Carol, Irma, Marjorie,
    Signified nothing.
    Rose could have a meaning,
    But hadn't as it went.
    (She knew a Rose.
    )
    This difference from other names it was
    Made people notice it—and notice her.

    (They either noticed it, or got it wrong.
    )
    Her problem was to find out what it asked
    In dress or manner of the girl who bore it.

    If she could form some notion of her mother—
    What she bad thought was lovely, and what good.

    This was her mother's childhood home;
    The house one story high in front, three stories
    On the end it presented to the road.

    (The arrangement made a pleasant sunny cellar.
    )
    Her mother's bedroom was her father's still,
    Where she could watch her mother's picture fading.

    Once she found for a bookmark in the Bible
    A maple leaf she thought must have been laid
    In wait for her there.
    She read every word
    Of the two pages it was pressed between,
    As if it was her mother speaking to her.

    But forgot to put the leaf back in closing
    And lost the place never to read again.

    She was sure, though, there had been nothing in it.


    So she looked for herself, as everyone
    Looks for himself, more or less outwardly.

    And her self-seeking, fitful though it was,
    May still have been what led her on to read,
    And think a little, and get some city schooling.

    She learned shorthand, whatever shorthand may
    Have had to do with it--she sometimes wondered.

    So, till she found herself in a strange place
    For the name Maple to have brought her to,
    Taking dictation on a paper pad
    And, in the pauses when she raised her eyes,
    Watching out of a nineteenth story window
    An airship laboring with unshiplike motion
    And a vague all-disturbing roar above the river
    Beyond the highest city built with hands.

    Someone was saying in such natural tones
    She almost wrote the words down on her knee,
    "Do you know you remind me of a tree--
    A maple tree?"

    "Because my name is Maple?"
    "Isn't it Mabel? I thought it was Mabel.
    "

    "No doubt you've heard the office call me Mabel.

    I have to let them call me what they like.
    "

    They were both stirred that he should have divined
    Without the name her personal mystery.

    It made it seem as if there must be something
    She must have missed herself.
    So they were married,
    And took the fancy home with them to live by.


    They went on pilgrimage once to her father's
    (The house one story high in front, three stories
    On the side it presented to the road)
    To see if there was not some special tree
    She might have overlooked.
    They could find none,
    Not so much as a single tree for shade,
    Let alone grove of trees for sugar orchard.

    She told him of the bookmark maple leaf
    In the big Bible, and all she remembered
    of the place marked with it—"Wave offering,
    Something about wave offering, it said.
    "

    "You've never asked your father outright, have you?"

    "I have, and been Put off sometime, I think.
    "
    (This was her faded memory of the way
    Once long ago her father had put himself off.
    )
    "Because no telling but it may have been
    Something between your father and your mother
    Not meant for us at all.
    "
    "Not meant for me?
    Where would the fairness be in giving me
    A name to carry for life and never know
    The secret of?"
    "And then it may have been
    Something a father couldn't tell a daughter
    As well as could a mother.
    And again
    It may have been their one lapse into fancy
    'Twould be too bad to make him sorry for
    By bringing it up to him when be was too old.

    Your father feels us round him with our questing,
    And holds us off unnecessarily,
    As if he didn't know what little thing
    Might lead us on to a discovery.

    It was as personal as be could be
    About the way he saw it was with you
    To say your mother, bad she lived, would be
    As far again as from being born to bearing.
    "

    "Just one look more with what you say in mind,
    And I give up"; which last look came to nothing.

    But though they now gave up the search forever,
    They clung to what one had seen in the other
    By inspiration.
    It proved there was something.

    They kept their thoughts away from when the maples
    Stood uniform in buckets, and the steam
    Of sap and snow rolled off the sugarhouse.

    When they made her related to the maples,
    It was the tree the autumn fire ran through
    And swept of leathern leaves, but left the bark
    Unscorched, unblackened, even, by any smoke.

    They always took their holidays in autumn.

    Once they came on a maple in a glade,
    Standing alone with smooth arms lifted up,
    And every leaf of foliage she'd worn
    Laid scarlet and pale pink about her feet.

    But its age kept them from considering this one.

    Twenty-five years ago at Maple's naming
    It hardly could have been a two-leaved seedling
    The next cow might have licked up out at pasture.

    Could it have been another maple like it?
    They hovered for a moment near discovery,
    Figurative enough to see the symbol,
    But lacking faith in anything to mean
    The same at different times to different people.

    Perhaps a filial diffidence partly kept them
    From thinking it could be a thing so bridal.

    And anyway it came too late for Maple.

    She used her hands to cover up her eyes.


    "We would not see the secret if we could now:
    We are not looking for it any more.
    "

    Thus had a name with meaning, given in death,
    Made a girl's marriage, and ruled in her life.

    No matter that the meaning was not clear.

    A name with meaning could bring up a child,
    Taking the child out of the parents' hands.

    Better a meaningless name, I should say,
    As leaving more to nature and happy chance.

    Name children some names and see what you do.
    ''',
}
