New Hampshire

by Robert Frost

I MET a lady from the South who said

(You won't believe she said it, but she said it):

"None of my family ever worked, or had

A thing to sell."  I don't suppose the work

Much matters.  You may work for all of me.

I've seen the time I've had to work myself.

The having anything to sell ¹ is what

Is the disgrace in man or state or nation.

I met a traveller from Arkansas

Who boasted of his state as beautiful

For diamonds and apples.  "Diamonds

And apples in commercial quantities?"

I asked him, on my guard.  "Oh yes," he answered,

Off his.  The time was evening in the Pullman.

"I see the porter's made your bed," I told him.

I met a Californian who would

Talk California — a state so blessed,

He said, in climate none had ever died there

A natural death, and Vigilance Committees

Had had to organize to stock the graveyards

And vindicate the state's humanity.

"Just the way Steffanson runs on," I murmured,

"About the British Arctic.  That's what comes

Of being in the market with a climate."

I met a poet from another state,

A zealot full of fluid inspiration,

Who in the name of fluid inspiration,

But in the best style of bad salesmanship,

Angrily tried to make me write a protest

(In verse I think) against the Volstead Act.

He didn't even offer me a drink

Until I asked for one to steady him.

This is called having an idea to sell.

It never could have happened in New Hampshire.

The only person really soiled with trade

I ever stumbled on in old New Hampshire

Was someone who had just come back ashamed

From selling things in California.

He'd built a noble mansard roof with balls

On turrets like Constantinople, deep

In woods some ten miles from a railroad station,

As if to put forever out of mind

The hope of being, as we say, received.

I found him standing at the close of day

Inside the threshold of his open barn,

Like a lone actor on a gloomy stage —

And recognized him through the iron grey

In which his face was muffled to the eyes

As an old boyhood friend, and once indeed

A drover with me on the road to Brighton.

His farm was "grounds," and not a farm at all;

His house among the local sheds and shanties

Rose like a factor's at a trading station.

And he was rich, and I was still a rascal.

I couldn't keep from asking impolitely,

Where had he been and what had he been doing?

How did he get so?  (Rich was understood.)

In dealing in "old rags" in San Francisco.

Oh it was terrible as well could be.

We both of us turned over in our graves.

Just specimens is all New Hampshire has,

One each of everything as in a show-case

Which naturally she doesn't care to sell.

She had one President (pronounce him Purse,

And make the most of it for better or worse.

He's your one chance to score against the state).

She had one Daniel Webster.  He was all

The Daniel Webster ever was or shall be.

She had the Dartmouth needed to produce him.

I call her old.  She has one family

Whose claim is good to being settled here

Before the era of colonization,

And before that of exploration even.

John Smith remarked them as he coasted by

Dangling their legs and fishing off a wharf

At the Isles of Shoals, and satisfied himself

They weren't Red Indians but veritable

Pre-primitives of the white race, dawn people,

Like those who furnished Adam's sons with wives;

However uninnocent they may have been

In being there so early in our history.

They'd been there then a hundred years or more.

Pity he didn't ask what they were up to

At that date with a wharf already built,

And take their name.  They've since told me their name —

Today an honored one in Nottingham.

As for what they were up to more than fishing —

Suppose they weren't behaving Puritanly,

The hour had not yet struck for being good,

Mankind had not yet gone on the Sabbatical.

It became an explorer of the deep

Not to explore too deep in others' business.

Did you but know of him, New Hampshire has

One real reformer who would change the world

So it would be accepted by two classes,

Artists the minute they set up as artists,

Before, that is, they are themselves accepted,

And boys the minute they get out of college.

I can't help thinking those are tests to go by.

And she has one I don't know what to call him,

Who comes from Philadelphia every year

With a great flock of chickens of rare breeds

He wants to give the educational

Advantages of growing almost wild

Under the watchful eye of hawk and eagle —

Dorkings because they're spoken of by Chaucer,

Sussex because they're spoken of by Herrick.

She has a touch of gold.  New Hampshire gold — ²

You may have heard of it.  I had a farm

Offered me not long since up Berlin way

With a mine on it that was worked for gold;

But not gold in commercial quantities.

Just enough gold to make the engagement rings

And marriage rings of those who owned the farm.

What gold more innocent could one have asked for?

One of my children ranging after rocks

Lately brought home from Andover or Canaan

A specimen of beryl with a trace

Of radium.  I know with radium

The trace would have to be the merest trace

To be below the threshold of commercial,

But trust New Hampshire not to have enough

Of radium or anything to sell.

A specimen of everything, I said.

She has one witch — oldstyle. ³   She lives in Colebrook.

(The only other witch I ever met

Was lately at a cut-glass dinner in Boston.

There were four candles and four people present.

The witch was young, and beautiful (new style),

And open-minded.  She was free to question

Her gift for reading letters locked in boxes.

Why was it so much greater when the boxes

Were metal than it was when they were wooden?

It made the world seem so mysterious.

The S'ciety for Psychical Research

Was cognizant.  Her husband was worth millions.

I think he owned some shares in Harvard College.)

New Hampshire used to have at Salem

A company we called the White Corpuscles,

Whose duty was at any hour of night

To rush in sheets and fool's caps where they smelled

A thing the least bit doubtfully perscented

And give someone the Skipper Ireson's Ride.

One each of everything as in a show-case.

More than enough land for a specimen

You'll say she has, but there there enters in

Something else to protect her from herself.

There quality ⁴ makes up for quantity.

Not even New Hampshire farms are much for sale.

The farm I made my home on in the mountains

I had to take by force rather than buy.

I caught the owner outdoors by himself

Raking up after winter, and I said,

"I'm going to put you off this farm:  I want it."

"Where are you going to put me?  In the road?"

"I'm going to put you on the farm next to it."

"Why won't the farm next to it do for you?"

"I like this better."  It was really better.

Apples?  New Hampshire has them, but unsprayed,

With no suspicion in stem-end or blossom-end

Of vitriol or arsenate of lead,

And so not good for anything but cider.

Her unpruned grapes are flung like lariats

Far up the birches out of reach of man. ⁵

A state producing precious metals, stones,

And — writing; none of these except perhaps

The precious literature in quantity

Or quality to worry the producer

About disposing of it.  Do you know,

Considering the market, there are more

Poems produced than any other thing? ⁶

No wonder poets sometimes have to seem

So much more business-like than business men.

Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.

She's one of the two best states in the Union.

Vermont's the other.  And the two have been

Yoke-fellows in the sap-yoke from of old

In many Marches. ⁷  And they lie like wedges,

Thick end to thin end and thin end to thick end,

And are a figure of the way the strong

Of mind and strong of arm should fit together,

One thick where one is thin and vice versa.

New Hampshire raises the Connecticut

In a trout hatchery near Canada,

But soon divides the river with Vermont.

Both are delightful states for their absurdly

Small towns — Lost Nation, Bungey, Muddy Boo,

Poplin, Still Corners (so called not because

The place is silent all day long, nor yet

Because it boasts a whisky still — because

It set out once to be a city and still

Is only corners, cross-roads in a wood).

And I remember one whose name appeared

Between the pictures on a movie screen

Election ⁸ night once in Franconia,

When everything had gone Republican

And Democrats were sore in need of comfort:

Easton goes Democratic, Wilson 4

Hughes 2.  And everybody to the saddest

Laughed the loud laugh, the big laugh at the little.

New York (five million) laughs at Manchester,

Manchester (sixty or seventy thousand) laughs

At Littleton (four thousand), Littleton

Laughs at Franconia (seven hundred), and

Franconia laughs, I fear, — did laugh that night —

At Easton.  What has Easton left to laugh at,

And like the actress exclaim, "Oh my God" at?

There's Bungey;  and for Bungey there are towns,

Whole townships named but without population. ⁹

Anything I can say about New Hampshire

Will serve almost as well about Vermont,

Excepting that they differ in their mountains.

The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight;

New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil.

I had been coming to New Hampshire mountains.

And here I am and what am I to say?

Here first my theme becomes embarrassing.

Emerson said, "The God who made New Hampshire

Taunted the lofty land with little men."

Another Massachusetts poet said,

"I go no more to summer in New Hampshire.

I've given up my summer place in Dublin."

But when I asked to know what ailed New Hampshire,

She said she couldn't stand the people in it,

The little men (it's Massachusetts speaking).

And when I asked to know what ailed the people,

She said, "Go read your own books and find out."

I may as well confess myself the author

Of several books against the world in general.

To take them as against a special state

Or even nation's to restrict my meaning.

I'm what is called a sensibilitist,

Or otherwise an environmentalist.

I refuse to adapt myself a mite

To any change from hot to cold, from wet

To dry, from poor to rich, or back again.

I make a virtue of my suffering

From nearly everything that goes on round me. ¹⁰

In other words, I know wherever I am,

Being the creature of literature I am,

I shall not lack for pain to keep me awake.

Kit Marlowe taught me how to say my prayers:

"Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it."

Samoa, Russia, Ireland I complain of,

No less than England, France and Italy.

Because I wrote my novels in New Hampshire

Is no proof that I aimed them at New Hampshire.

When I left Massachusetts years ago

Between two days, the reason why I sought

New Hampshire, not Connecticut,

Rhode Island, New York, or Vermont was this:

Where I was living then, New Hampshire offered

The nearest boundary to escape across.

I hadn't an illusion in my hand-bag

About the people being better there

Than those I left behind.  I thought they weren't.

I thought they couldn't be.  And yet they were.

I'd sure had no such friends in Massachusetts

As Hall of Windham, Gay of Atkinson, ¹¹

Bartlett of Raymond (now of Colorado),

Harris of Derry, and Lynch of Bethlehem.

The glorious bards of Massachusetts seem

To want to make New Hampshire people over.

They taunt the lofty land with little men.

I don't know what to say about the people.

For art's sake one could almost wish them worse ¹²

Rather than better.  How are we to write

The Russian novel in America

As long as life goes so unterribly?

There is the pinch from which our only outcry

In literature to date is heard to come.

We get what little misery we can

Out of not having cause for misery.

It makes the guild of novel writers sick

To be expected to be Dostoievskis

On nothing worse than too much luck and comfort.

This is not sorrow, though; it's just the vapors,

And recognized as such in Russia itself

Under the new régime, and so forbidden.

If well it is with Russia, then feel free

To say so or be stood against the wall

And shot.  It's Pollyanna now or death.

This, then, is the new freedom we hear tell of;

And very sensible.  No state can build

A literature that shall at once be sound

And sad on a foundation of wellbeing.

To show the level of intelligence

Among us; it was just a Warren farmer

Whose horse had pulled him short up in the road

By me, a stranger.  This is what he said,

From nothing but embarrassment and want

Of anything more sociable to say:

"You hear those hound-dogs sing on Moosilauke? ¹³

Well they remind me of the hue and cry

We've heard against the Mid-Victorians

And never rightly understood till Bryan

Retired from politics and joined the chorus.

The matter with the Mid-Victorians

Seems to have been a man named John L. Darwin." ¹⁴

"Go 'long," I said to him, he to his horse.

I knew a man who failing as a farmer

Burned down his farmhouse for the fire insurance,

And spent the proceeds on a telescope ¹⁵

To satisfy a life-long curiosity

About our place among the infinities.

And how was that for other-worldliness?

If I must choose which I would elevate —

The people or the already lofty mountains,

I'd elevate the already lofty mountains.

The only fault I find with old New Hampshire

Is that her mountains aren't quite high enough.

I was not always so; I've come to be so.

How, to my sorrow, how have I attained

A height from which to look down critical

On mountains?  What has given me assurance

To say what height becomes New Hampshire mountains,

Or any mountains?  Can it be some strength

I feel as of an earthquake in my back

To heave them higher to the morning star?

Can it be foreign travel in the Alps?

Or having seen and credited a moment

The solid moulding of vast peaks of cloud

Behind the pitiful reality

Of Lincoln, Lafayette and Liberty?

Or some such sense as says how high shall jet

The fountain in proportion to the basin?

No, none of these has raised me to my throne

Of intellectual dissatisfaction,

But the sad accident of having seen

Our actual mountains given in a map

Of early times as twice the height they are —

Ten thousand feet instead of only five —

Which shows how sad an accident may be.

Five thousand is no longer high enough.

Whereas I never had a good idea

About improving people in the world,

Here I am over-fertile in suggestion,

And cannot rest from planning day or night

How high I'd thrust the peaks in summer snow

To tap the upper sky and draw a flow

Of frosty night air on the vale below

Down from the stars to freeze the dew as starry.

The more the sensibilitist I am

The more I seem to want my mountains wild;

The way the wiry gang-boss liked the log-jam. ¹⁶

After he'd picked the lock and got it started,

He dodged a log that lifted like an arm

Against the sky to break his back for him,

Then came in dancing, skipping, with his life

Across the roar and chaos, and the words

We saw him say along the zigzag journey

Were doubtless as the words we heard him say

On coming nearer:  "Wasn't she an i-deal

Son-of-a-bitch?  You bet she was an i-deal."

For all her mountains fall a little short,

Her people not quite short enough for Art,

She's still New Hampshire, a most restful state.

Lately in converse with a New York alec

About the new school of the pseudo-phallic,

I found myself in a close corner where

I had to make an almost funny choice.

"Choose you which you will be — a prude, or puke,

Mewling and puking in the public arms."

"Me for the hills where I don't have to choose." ¹⁷

"But if you had to choose, which would you be?"

I wouldn't be a prude afraid of nature.

I know a man who took a double axe

And went alone against a grove of trees;

But his heart failing him, he dropped the axe

And ran for shelter quoting Matthew Arnold:

"Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood;

There's been enough shed without shedding mine.

Remember Birnam Wood!  The wood's in flux!"

He had a special terror of the flux

That showed itself in dendrophobia.

The only decent tree had been to mill

And educated into boards, he said.

He knew too well for any earthly use

The line where man leaves off and nature starts, ¹⁸

And never over-stepped it save in dreams.

He stood on the safe side of the line talking;

Which is sheer Matthew Arnoldism,

The cult of one who owned himself "a foiled,

Circuitous wanderer," and "took dejectedly

His seat upon the intellectual throne."

Agreed in frowning on these improvised

Altars the woods are full of nowadays,

Again as in the days when Ahaz sinned

By worship under green trees in the open.

Scarcely a mile but that I come on one,

A black-cheeked stone and stick of rain-washed charcoal.

Even to say the groves were God's first temples

Comes too near to Ahaz' sin for safety.

Nothing not built with hands of course is sacred.

But here is not a question of what's sacred;

Rather of what to face or run away from.

I'd hate to be a runaway from nature.

And neither would I choose to be a puke

Who cares not what he does in company,

And, when he can't do anything, falls back

On words, and tries his worst to make words speak

Louder than actions, and sometimes achieves it.

It seems a narrow choice the age insists on.

How about being a good Greek, for instance?

That course, they tell me, isn't offered this year.

"Come, but this isn't choosing — puke or prude?"

Well, if I have to choose one or the other,

I choose to be a plain New Hampshire farmer

With an income in cash of say a thousand

(From say a publisher in New York City).

It's restful to arrive at a decision,

And restful just to think about New Hampshire.

At present I am living in Vermont.