To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches; And so I dream of going back to be. It’s when I’m weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig’s having lashed across it open. I’d like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate wilfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love: I don’t know where it’s likely to go better. I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk _Toward_ heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. FRAGMENTARY BLUE Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird or butterfly Or flower or wearing-stone or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue? Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)— Though some savants make earth include the sky; And blue so far above us comes so high It only gives our wish for blue a whet. THE ONSET Always the same when on a fated night At last the gathered snow lets down as white As may be in dark woods and with a song It shall not make again all winter long— Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,— I almost stumble looking up and round, As one who, overtaken by the end, Gives up his errand and lets death descend Upon him where he is, with nothing done To evil, no important triumph won More than if life had never been begun.