"The bread we bought in passing at the store. There's butter somewhere, too." "Let's rend the bread. I'll light the fire for company for you; You'll not have any other company Till Ed begins to get out on a Sunday To look us over and give us his idea Of what wants pruning, shingling, breaking up. He'll know what he would do if he were we, And all at once. He'll plan for us and plan To help us, but he'll take it out in planning. Well, you can set the table with the loaf. Let's see you find your loaf. I'll light the fire. I like chairs occupying other chairs Not offering a lady—-" "There again, Joe! _You're tired._" "I'm drunk-nonsensical tired out; Don't mind a word I say. It's a day's work To empty one house of all household goods And fill another with 'em fifteen miles away, Although you do no more than dump them down." "Dumped down in paradise we are and happy." "It's all so much what I have always wanted, I can't believe it's what you wanted, too." "Shouldn't you like to know?" "I'd like to know If it is what you wanted, then how much You wanted it for me." "A troubled conscience! You don't want me to tell if _I_ don't know." "I don't want to find out what can't be known. But who first said the word to come?" My dear, It's who first thought the thought. You're searching, Joe, For things that don't exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings—-there are no such things. There are only middles." "What is this?" "This life? Our sitting here by lantern-light together Amid the wreckage of a former home? You won't deny the lantern isn't new. The stove is not, and you are not to me, Nor I to you." "Perhaps you never were?" "It would take me forever to recite All that's not new in where we find ourselves. New is a word for fools in towns who think Style upon style in dress and thought at last Must get somewhere. I've heard you say as much. No, this is no beginning." "Then an end?" "End is a gloomy word." "Is it too late To drag you out for just a good-night call On the old peach trees on the knoll to grope By starlight in the grass for a last peach The neighbors may not have taken as their right When the house wasn't lived in? I've been looking: I doubt if they have left us many grapes. Before we set ourselves to right the house, The first thing in the morning, out we go To go the round of apple, cherry, peach, Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook. All of a farm it is." "I know this much: I'm going to put you in your bed, if first I have to make you build it. Come, the light." When there was no more lantern in the kitchen, The fire got out through crannies in the stove And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling, As much at home as if they'd always danced there. VI THE ROAD NOT TAKEN Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveller, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;