Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I'm a schizophrenic,

And so am I.

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

 

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

 

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

 

~Robert Frost

  At the silence of twilight's contemplative hour,
    I have mused in a sorrowful mood,
  On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom the bower,
    Where the home of my forefathers stood.
  All ruin'd and wild is their roofless abode,
  And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree:
  And travell'd by few is the grass-cover'd road,
  Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode
    To his hills that encircle the sea.

  Yet wandering I found on my ruinous walk,
    By the dial-stone aged and green,
  One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,
    To mark where a garden had been.
  Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,
    All wild in the silence of nature, it drew,
  From each wandering sun-beam, a lonely embrace
  For the night-weed and thorn overshadow'd the place,
    Where the flower of my forefathers grew.

  Sweet bud of the wilderness! emblem of all
    That remains in this desolate heart!
  The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall,
    But patience shall never depart!
  Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright,
    In the days of delusion by fancy combined
  With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight,
  Abandon my soul, like a dream of the night,
    And leave but a desert behind.

  Be hush'd, my dark spirit! For wisdom condemns
    When the faint and the feeble deplore;
  Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems
    A thousand wild waves on the shore!
  Through the perils of chance, and the scowl of disdain,
    May thy front be unalter'd, thy courage elate!
  Yea! even the name I have worshipp'd in vain
  Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance again:
    To bear is to conquer our fate.

 

~Campbell

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