Mowing
Robert Frost
There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound –
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.
About this poem
“Mowing” was published in Robert Frost’s book “A Boy’s Will” (H. Holt and Company, 1915).
About Robert Frost
Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco. He received the Pulitzer Prize four times and read at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. Some of his collections include “Mountain Interval” (1916), “A Further Range” (1936) and “A Witness Tree” (1942). Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and he died in Boston on Jan. 29, 1963.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
This poem is in the public domain. Distributed by King Features Syndicate
