A Line-Storm Song
Robert Frost (from A Boy’s Will, 1915)
The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz-stones lift
And the hoof -prints vanish away;
The roadside-flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain. Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.
The birds have less to say for themselves,
In the wood -world's torn despair,
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there;
All song of the woods is hushed like some
Wild, easily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.
There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters a-flutter with wind
From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast,
The rain-fresh goldenrod.
Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea's return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when, after doubt,
Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout,
And be my love in the rain.
