{
 "id": "robert-frost/a-servant-to-servants",
 "title": "A Servant to Servants",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "North of Boston",
 "book_slug": "north-of-boston",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 9,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1914,
  "venue": "North of Boston (1914)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7057510"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-frost_north-of-boston",
  "file": "north-of-boston.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3026",
   "https://archive.org/details/northboston00frosgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 177,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 55,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I didn’t make you know how glad I was",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To have you come and camp here on our land.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I promised myself to get down some day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And see the way you lived, but I don’t know!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With a houseful of hungry men to feed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I guess you’d find.⁠ ⁠… It seems to me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I can’t express my feelings any more",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than I can raise my voice or want to lift",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to).",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Did ever you feel so? I hope you never.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s got so I don’t even know for sure",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whether I am glad, sorry, or anything.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There’s nothing but a voice-like left inside",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That seems to tell me how I ought to feel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And would feel if I wasn’t all gone wrong.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You take the lake. I look and look at it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see it’s a fair, pretty sheet of water.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I stand and make myself repeat out loud",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The advantages it has, so long and narrow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like a deep piece of some old running river",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cut short off at both ends. It lies five miles",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Straight away through the mountain notch",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the sink window where I wash the plates,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all our storms come up toward the house,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Drawing the slow waves whiter and whiter and whiter.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It took my mind off doughnuts and soda biscuit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To step outdoors and take the water dazzle",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A sunny morning, or take the rising wind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "About my face and body and through my wrapper,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When a storm threatened from the Dragon’s Den,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And a cold chill shivered across the lake.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see it’s a fair, pretty sheet of water,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our Willoughby! How did you hear of it?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I expect, though, everyone’s heard of it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a book about ferns? Listen to that!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You let things more like feathers regulate",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your going and coming. And you like it here?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I can see how you might. But I don’t know!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It would be different if more people came,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For then there would be business. As it is,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sometimes we don’t. We’ve a good piece of shore",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That ought to be worth something, and may yet.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I don’t count on it as much as Len.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He looks on the bright side of everything,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Including me. He thinks I’ll be all right",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With doctoring. But it’s not medicine⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lowe is the only doctor’s dared to say so⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s rest I want⁠—there, I have said it out⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From cooking meals for hungry hired men",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And washing dishes after them⁠—from doing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Things over and over that just won’t stay done.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By good rights I ought not to have so much",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Put on me, but there seems no other way.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He says the best way out is always through.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I agree to that, or in so far",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As that I can see no way out but through⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leastways for me⁠—and then they’ll be convinced.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s not that Len don’t want the best for me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It was his plan our moving over in",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beside the lake from where that day I showed you",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We used to live⁠—ten miles from anywhere.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We didn’t change without some sacrifice,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But Len went at it to make up the loss.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His work’s a man’s, of course, from sun to sun,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But he works when he works as hard as I do⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though there’s small profit in comparisons.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Women and men will make them all the same.)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But work ain’t all. Len undertakes too much.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He’s into everything in town. This year",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s highways, and he’s got too many men",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Around him to look after that make waste.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They take advantage of him shamefully,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And proud, too, of themselves for doing so.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We have four here to board, great good-for-nothings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While I fry their bacon. Much they care!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No more put out in what they do or say",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than if I wasn’t in the room at all.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Coming and going all the time, they are:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I don’t learn what their names are, let alone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their characters, or whether they are safe",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To have inside the house with doors unlocked.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’m not afraid of them, though, if they’re not",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Afraid of me. There’s two can play at that.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have my fancies: it runs in the family.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My father’s brother wasn’t right. They kept him",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Locked up for years back there at the old farm.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’ve been away once⁠—yes, I’ve been away.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The State Asylum. I was prejudiced;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I wouldn’t have sent anyone of mine there;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You know the old idea⁠—the only asylum",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rather than send their folks to such a place,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Kept them at home; and it does seem more human.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But it’s not so: the place is the asylum.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There they have every means proper to do with,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And you aren’t darkening other people’s lives⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Worse than no good to them, and they no good",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To you in your condition; you can’t know",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Affection or the want of it in that state.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’ve heard too much of the old-fashioned way.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My father’s brother, he went mad quite young.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some thought he had been bitten by a dog,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because his violence took on the form",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of carrying his pillow in his teeth;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But it’s more likely he was crossed in love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or so the story goes. It was some girl.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Anyway all he talked about was love.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They soon saw he would do someone a mischief",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If he wa’n’t kept strict watch of, and it ended",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In father’s building him a sort of cage,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or room within a room, of hickory poles,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to ceiling⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A narrow passage all the way around.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Anything they put in for furniture",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He’d tear to pieces, even a bed to lie on.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So they made the place comfortable with straw,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like a beast’s stall, to ease their consciences.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of course they had to feed him without dishes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They tried to keep him clothed, but he paraded",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With his clothes on his arm⁠—all of his clothes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cruel⁠—it sounds. I ’spose they did the best",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They knew. And just when he was at the height,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Father and mother married, and mother came,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A bride, to help take care of such a creature,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And accommodate her young life to his.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That was what marrying father meant to her.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She had to lie and hear love things made dreadful",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By his shouts in the night. He’d shout and shout",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Until the strength was shouted out of him,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And his voice died down slowly from exhaustion.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He’d pull his bars apart like bow and bow-string,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And let them go and make them twang until",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then he’d crow as if he thought that child’s play⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The only fun he had. I’ve heard them say, though,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They found a way to put a stop to it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He was before my time⁠—I never saw him;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the pen stayed exactly as it was",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There in the upper chamber in the ell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I often think of the smooth hickory bars.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It got so I would say⁠—you know, half fooling⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“It’s time I took my turn upstairs in jail”⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Just as you will till it becomes a habit.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No wonder I was glad to get away.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mind you, I waited till Len said the word.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I didn’t want the blame if things went wrong.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was glad though, no end, when we moved out,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I looked to be happy, and I was,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As I said, for a while⁠—but I don’t know!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Somehow the change wore out like a prescription.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And there’s more to it than just window-views",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And living by a lake. I’m past such help⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unless Len took the notion, which he won’t,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I won’t ask him⁠—it’s not sure enough.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I ’spose I’ve got to go the road I’m going:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Other folks have to, and why shouldn’t I?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I almost think if I could do like you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Drop everything and live out on the ground⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But it might be, come night, I shouldn’t like it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or a long rain. I should soon get enough,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And be glad of a good roof overhead.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’ve lain awake thinking of you, I’ll warrant,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More than you have yourself, some of these nights.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The wonder was the tents weren’t snatched away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From over you as you lay in your beds.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I haven’t courage for a risk like that.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bless you, of course, you’re keeping me from work,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the thing of it is, I need to be kept.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There’s work enough to do⁠—there’s always that;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But behind’s behind. The worst that you can do",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is set me back a little more behind.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I sha’n’t catch up in this world, anyway.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’d rather you’d not go unless you must.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}