Part of a moon was falling down the west,

Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.

Its light poured softly in her lap.  She saw

And spread her apron to it.  she put out her hand

Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,

Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,

As if she played unheard the tenderness

That wrought on him beside her in the night.

'Warren,' she said, 'he has come home to die:

You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time.'

 

'Home,' he mocked gently.

 

'Yes, what else but home?

It all depends on what you mean by home.

Of course he's nothing to us, any more

Than was the hound that came a stranger to us

Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.'

 

'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in.'

 

'I should have called it

Something you somehow haven't to deserve.'

 

Robert Frost, excerpt from Death of the Hired Man.

Published in North Boston, 1915, by Henry Holt and Company