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Brown's Descent, or the Willy-nilly Slide by Robert Frost |
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Brown lived
at such a lofty farm
That everyone for miles could
see
His lantern when he did his chores
In winter
after half-past three.
And many must have seen
him make
His wild descent from there one night,
'Cross lots, 'cross walls, 'cross everything,
Describing rings of lantern light.
Between the
house and barn the gale
Got him by something he had
on
And blew him out on the icy crust
That cased
the world, and he was gone!
Walls were all
buried, trees were few:
He saw no stay unless he
stove
A hole in somewhere with his heel.
But
though repeatedly he strove
And stamped and said
things to himself,
And sometimes something seemed
to yield,
He gained no foothold, but pursued
His
journey down from field to field.
Sometimes he
came with arms outspread
Like wings, revolving in
the scene
Upon his longer axis, and
With no
small dignity of mien.
Faster or slower as he
chanced,
Sitting or standing as he chose,
According as he feared to risk
His neck, or thought
to spare his clothes,
He never let the lantern
drop.
And some exclaimed who saw afar
The
figures he described with it,
"I wonder what those
signals are
Brown makes at such an hour of night!
He's celebrating something strange.
I wonder if
he's sold his farm,
Or been made Master of the
Grange."
He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he
checked;
He fell and made the lantern rattle
(But saved the light from going out.)
So half-way
down he fought the battle
Incredulous of his own
bad luck.
And then becoming reconciled
To
everything, he gave it up
And came down like a
coasting child.
"Well-I-be-" that was all he
said,
As standing in the river road,
He looked
back up the slippery slope
(Two miles it was) to
his abode.
Sometimes as an authority
On
motor-cars, I'm asked if I
Should say our stock was
petered out,
And this is my sincere reply:
Yankees are what they always were.
Don't think
Brown ever gave up hope
Of getting home again because
He couldn't climb that slippery slope;
Or even
thought of standing there
Until the January thaw
Should take the polish off the crust.
He bowed with
grace to natural law,
And then went round it on
his feet,
After the manner of our stock;
Not
much concerned for those to whom,
At that
particular time o'clock,
It must have looked as
if the course
He steered was really straight away
From that which he was headed for-
Not much
concerned for them, I say:
No more so than became
a man-
And politician at odd seasons.
I've kept
Brown standing in the cold
While I invested him
with reasons;
But now he snapped his eyes three
times;
Then shook his lantern, saying, "Ile's
'Bout out!" and took the long way home
By road, a
matter of several miles.
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