A Star in A Stone-Boat
by
Robert Frost
(Poem)
For Lincoln McVeigh
A Star in A Stone-Boat
Never
tell me that not one star of all
That
slip from heaven at night and softly fall
Has
been picked up with stones to build a wall.
Some
laborer found one faded and stone-cold,
And
saving that its weight suggested gold
And
tugged it from his first too certain hold,
He
noticed nothing in it to remark.
He
was not used to handling stars thrown dark
And
lifeless from an interrupted arc.
He
did not recognize in that smooth coal
The
one thing palpable besides the soul
To
penetrate the air in which we roll.
He
did not see how like a flying thing
It
brooded ant eggs, and bad one large wing,
One
not so large for flying in a ring,
And
a long Bird of Paradise's tail
(Though
these when not in use to fly and trail
It
drew back in its body like a snail);
Nor
know that be might move it from the spot—
The
harm was done: from having been star-shot
The
very nature of the soil was hot
And
burning to yield flowers instead of grain,
Flowers
fanned and not put out by all the rain
Poured
on them by his prayers prayed in vain.
He
moved it roughly with an iron bar,
He
loaded an old stoneboat with the star
And
not, as you might think, a flying car,
Such
as even poets would admit perforce
More
practical than Pegasus the horse
If
it could put a star back in its course.
He
dragged it through the plowed ground at a pace
But
faintly reminiscent of the race
Of
jostling rock in interstellar space.
It
went for building stone, and I, as though
Commanded
in a dream, forever go
To
right the wrong that this should have been so.
Yet
ask where else it could have gone as well,
I do
not know—I cannot stop to tell:
He
might have left it lying where it fell.
From
following walls I never lift my eye,
Except
at night to places in the sky
Where
showers of charted meteors let fly.
Some
may know what they seek in school and church,
And
why they seek it there; for what I search
I
must go measuring stone walls, perch on perch;
Sure
that though not a star of death and birth,
So
not to be compared, perhaps, in worth
To
such resorts of life as Mars and Earth—
Though
not, I say, a star of death and sin,
It
yet has poles, and only needs a spin
To
show its worldly nature and begin
To
chafe and shuffle in my calloused palm
And
run off in strange tangents with my arm,
As
fish do with the line in first alarm.
Such
as it is, it promises the prize
Of
the one world complete in any size
That
I am like to compass, fool or wise.
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