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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=506810" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Servant To Servants</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I didn't make you know how glad I was<br>To have you come and camp here on our land.<br>I promised myself to get down some day<br>And see the way you lived, but I don't know!<br>With a houseful of hungry men to feed<br>I guess you'd find.... It seems to me<br>I can't express my feelings any more<br>Than I can raise my voice or want to lift<br>My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to).<br>Did ever you feel so? I hope you never.<br>It's got so I don't even know for sure<br>Whether I am glad, sorry, or anything.<br>There's nothing but a voice-like left inside<br>That seems to tell me how I ought to feel,<br>And would feel if I wasn't all gone wrong.<br>You take the lake. I look and look at it.<br>I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water.<br>I stand and make myself repeat out loud<br>The advantages it has, so long and narrow,<br>Like a deep piece of some old running river<br>Cut short off at both ends. It lies five miles<br>Straight away through the mountain notch<br>From the sink window where I wash the plates,<br>And all our storms come up toward the house,<br>Drawing the slow waves whiter and whiter and whiter.<br>It took my mind off doughnuts and soda biscuit<br>To step outdoors and take the water dazzle<br>A sunny morning, or take the rising wind<br>About my face and body and through my wrapper,<br>When a storm threatened from the Dragon's Den,<br>And a cold chill shivered across the lake.<br>I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water,<br>Our Willoughby! How did you hear of it?<br>I expect, though, everyone's heard of it.<br>In a book about ferns? Listen to that!<br>You let things more like feathers regulate<br>Your going and coming. And you like it here?<br>I can see how you might. But I don't know!<br>It would be different if more people came,<br>For then there would be business. As it is,<br>The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them,<br>Sometimes we don't. We've a good piece of shore<br>That ought to be worth something, and may yet.<br>But I don't count on it as much as Len.<br>He looks on the bright side of everything,<br>Including me. He thinks I'll be all right<br>With doctoring. But it's not medicine--<br>Lowe is the only doctor's dared to say so--<br>It's rest I want--there, I have said it out--<br>From cooking meals for hungry hired men<br>And washing dishes after them--from doing<br>Things over and over that just won't stay done.<br>By good rights I ought not to have so much<br>Put on me, but there seems no other way.<br>Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.<br>He says the best way out is always through.<br>And I agree to that, or in so far<br>As that I can see no way out but through--<br>Leastways for me--and then they'll be convinced.<br>It's not that Len don't want the best for me.<br>It was his plan our moving over in<br>Beside the lake from where that day I showed you<br>We used to live--ten miles from anywhere.<br>We didn't change without some sacrifice,<br>But Len went at it to make up the loss.<br>His work's a man's, of course, from sun to sun,<br>But he works when he works as hard as I do--<br>Though there's small profit in comparisons.<br>(Women and men will make them all the same.)<br>But work ain't all. Len undertakes too much.<br>He's into everything in town. This year<br>It's highways, and he's got too many men<br>Around him to look after that make waste.<br>They take advantage of him shamefully,<br>And proud, too, of themselves for doing so.<br>We have four here to board, great good-for-nothings,<br>Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk<br>While I fry their bacon. Much they care!<br>No more put out in what they do or say<br>Than if I wasn't in the room at all.<br>Coming and going all the time, they are:<br>I don't learn what their names are, let alone<br>Their characters, or whether they are safe<br>To have inside the house with doors unlocked.<br>I'm not afraid of them, though, if they're not<br>Afraid of me. There's two can play at that.<br>I have my fancies: it runs in the family.<br>My father's brother wasn't right. They kept him<br>Locked up for years back there at the old farm.<br>I've been away once--yes, I've been away.<br>The State Asylum. I was prejudiced;<br>I wouldn't have sent anyone of mine there;<br>You know the old idea--the only asylum<br>Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford,<br>Rather than send their folks to such a place,<br>Kept them at home; and it does seem more human.<br>But it's not so: the place is the asylum.<br>There they have every means proper to do with,<br>And you aren't darkening other people's lives--<br>Worse than no good to them, and they no good<br>To you in your condition; you can't know<br>Affection or the want of it in that state.<br>I've heard too much of the old-fashioned way.<br>My father's brother, he went mad quite young.<br>Some thought he had been bitten by a dog,<br>Because his violence took on the form<br>Of carrying his pillow in his teeth;<br>But it's more likely he was crossed in love,<br>Or so the story goes. It was some girl.<br>Anyway all he talked about was love.<br>They soon saw he would do someone a mischief<br>If he wa'n't kept strict watch of, and it ended<br>In father's building him a sort of cage,<br>Or room within a room, of hickory poles,<br>Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to ceiling,--<br>A narrow passage all the way around.<br>Anything they put in for furniture<br>He'd tear to pieces, even a bed to lie on.<br>So they made the place comfortable with straw,<br>Like a beast's stall, to ease their consciences.<br>Of course they had to feed him without dishes.<br>They tried to keep him clothed, but he paraded<br>With his clothes on his arm--all of his clothes.<br>Cruel--it sounds. I 'spose they did the best<br>They knew. And just when he was at the height,<br>Father and mother married, and mother came,<br>A bride, to help take care of such a creature,<br>And accommodate her young life to his.<br>That was what marrying father meant to her.<br>She had to lie and hear love things made dreadful<br>By his shouts in the night. He'd shout and shout<br>Until the strength was shouted out of him,<br>And his voice died down slowly from exhaustion.<br>He'd pull his bars apart like bow and bow-string,<br>And let them go and make them twang until<br>His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow.<br>And then he'd crow as if he thought that child's play--<br>The only fun he had. I've heard them say, though,<br>They found a way to put a stop to it.<br>He was before my time--I never saw him;<br>But the pen stayed exactly as it was<br>There in the upper chamber in the ell,<br>A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter.<br>I often think of the smooth hickory bars.<br>It got so I would say--you know, half fooling--<br>&quot;It's time I took my turn upstairs in jail&quot;--<br>Just as you will till it becomes a habit.<br>No wonder I was glad to get away.<br>Mind you, I waited till Len said the word.<br>I didn't want the blame if things went wrong.<br>I was glad though, no end, when we moved out,<br>And I looked to be happy, and I was,<br>As I said, for a while--but I don't know!<br>Somehow the change wore out like a prescription.<br>And there's more to it than just window-views<br>And living by a lake. I'm past such help--<br>Unless Len took the notion, which he won't,<br>And I won't ask him--it's not sure enough.<br>I 'spose I've got to go the road I'm going:<br>Other folks have to, and why shouldn't I?<br>I almost think if I could do like you,<br>Drop everything and live out on the ground--<br>But it might be, come night, I shouldn't like it,<br>Or a long rain. I should soon get enough,<br>And be glad of a good roof overhead.<br>I've lain awake thinking of you, I'll warrant,<br>More than you have yourself, some of these nights.<br>The wonder was the tents weren't snatched away<br>From over you as you lay in your beds.<br>I haven't courage for a risk like that.<br>Bless you, of course, you're keeping me from work,<br>But the thing of it is, I need to be kept.<br>There's work enough to do--there's always that;<br>But behind's behind. The worst that you can do<br>Is set me back a little more behind.<br>I sha'n't catch up in this world, anyway.<br>I'd rather you'd not go unless you must.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Robert+Frost">Robert Frost</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=506810" data-title="A Servant To Servants de Robert Frost" data-description="I didn't make you know how glad I was
To have you come and camp here on our land.
I promised myself to get down some day
And see the way you lived, but I don't know!
With a houseful of hungry men to feed
I guess you'd find.... It seems to me
I can..."></div>
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