{
 "id": "robert-frost/pauls-wife",
 "title": "Paul’s Wife",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Hampshire",
 "book_slug": "new-hampshire",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 8,
 "container": "Notes",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1923,
  "venue": "New Hampshire (1923)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/newhampshirepoem00fros_0",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58611",
   "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7008086"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-frost_new-hampshire",
  "file": "new-hampshire.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58611",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000433611"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 157,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
  "max_indent": 0
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "To drive Paul out of any lumber camp",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All that was needed was to say to him,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“How is the wife, Paul?”⁠—and he’d disappear.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some said it was because he had no wife,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And hated to be twitted on the subject.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Others because he’d come within a day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or so of having one, and then been jilted.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Others because he’d had one once, a good one,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who’d run away with some one else and left him.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And others still because he had one now",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He only had to be reminded of⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He was all duty to her in a minute:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He had to run right off to look her up,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As if to say, “That’s so, how is my wife?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hope she isn’t getting into mischief.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No one was anxious to get rid of Paul.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He’d been the hero of the mountain camps",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ever since, just to show them, he had slipped",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The bark of a whole tamarack off whole,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As clean as boys do off a willow twig",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To make a willow whistle on a Sunday",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In April by subsiding meadow brooks.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They seemed to ask him just to see him go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“How is the wife, Paul?” and he always went.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He never stopped to murder anyone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who asked the question. He just disappeared⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nobody knew in what direction,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Although it wasn’t usually long",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before they heard of him in some new camp,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The same Paul at the same old feats of logging.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The question everywhere was why should Paul",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Object to being asked a civil question⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A man you could say almost anything to",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Short of a fighting word. You have the answers.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And there was one more not so fair to Paul:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That Paul had married a wife not his equal.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Paul was ashamed of her. To match a hero,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She would have had to be a heroine;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Instead of which she was some half-breed squaw.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But if the story Murphy told was true,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She wasn’t anything to be ashamed of.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "You know Paul could do wonders. Everyone’s",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Heard how he thrashed the horses on a load",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That wouldn’t budge until they simply stretched",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their rawhide harness from the load to camp.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Paul told the boss the load would be all right,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“The sun will bring your load in”⁠—and it did⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By shrinking the rawhide to natural length.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That’s what is called a stretcher. But I guess",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The one about his jumping so’s to land",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With both his feet at once against the ceiling,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then land safely right side up again,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Back on the floor, is fact or pretty near fact.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well this is such a yarn. Paul sawed his wife",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Out of a white-pine log. Murphy was there,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, as you might say, saw the lady born.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Paul worked at anything in lumbering.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He’d been hard at it taking boards away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For⁠—I forget⁠—the last ambitious sawyer",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To want to find out if he couldn’t pile",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The lumber on Paul till Paul begged for mercy.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They’d sliced the first slab off a big butt log,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the sawyer had slammed the carriage back",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To slam end on again against the saw teeth.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To judge them by the way they caught themselves",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When they saw what had happened to the log,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They must have had a guilty expectation",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something was going to go with their slambanging.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something had left a broad black streak of grease",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On the new wood the whole length of the log",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Except, perhaps, a foot at either end.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But when Paul put his finger in the grease,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It wasn’t grease at all, but a long slot.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The log was hollow. They were sawing pine.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“First time I ever saw a hollow pine.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That comes of having Paul around the place.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take it to hell for me,” the sawyer said.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Everyone had to have a look at it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And tell Paul what he ought to do about it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(They treated it as his.) “You take a jack-knife,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And spread the opening, and you’ve got a dug-out",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All dug to go a-fishing in.” To Paul",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hollow looked too sound and clean and empty",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ever to have housed birds or beasts or bees.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There was no entrance for them to get in by.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It looked to him like some new kind of hollow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He thought he’d better take his jack-knife to.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So after work that evening he came back",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And let enough light into it by cutting",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To see if it was empty. He made out in there",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A slender length of pith, or was it pith?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It might have been the skin a snake had cast",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And left stood up on end inside the tree",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hundred years the tree must have been growing.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More cutting and he had this in both hands,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, looking from it to the pond near by,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Paul wondered how it would respond to water.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not a breeze stirred, but just the breath of air",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He made in walking slowly to the beach",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blew it once off his hands and almost broke it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He laid it at the edge where it could drink.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At the first drink it rustled and grew limp.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At the next drink it grew invisible.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Paul dragged the shallows for it with his fingers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thought it must have melted. It was gone.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then beyond the open water, dim with midges,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the log drive lay pressed against the boom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It slowly rose a person, rose a girl,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her wet hair heavy on her like a helmet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who, leaning on a log looked back at Paul.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that made Paul in turn look back",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To see if it was anyone behind him",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That she was looking at instead of him.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Murphy had been there watching all the time,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But from a shed where neither of them could see him.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There was a moment of suspense in birth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the girl seemed too water-logged to live,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before she caught her first breath with a gasp",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And laughed. Then she climbed slowly to her feet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And walked off talking to herself or Paul",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Across the logs like backs of alligators,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Paul taking after her around the pond.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Next evening Murphy and some other fellows",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Got drunk, and tracked the pair up Catamount,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the bare top of which there is a view",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To other hills across a kettle valley.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And there, well after dark, let Murphy tell it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They saw Paul and his creature keeping house.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It was the only glimpse that anyone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has had of Paul and her since Murphy saw them",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Falling in love across the twilight mill-pond.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More than a mile across the wilderness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They sat together half-way up a cliff",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a small niche let into it, the girl",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Brightly, as if a star played on the place,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Paul darkly, like her shadow. All the light",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was from the girl herself, though, not from a star,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As was apparent from what happened next.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All those great ruffians put their throats together,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And let out a loud yell, and threw a bottle,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As a brute tribute of respect to beauty.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of course the bottle fell short by a mile,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the shout reached the girl and put her light out.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She went out like a firefly, and that was all.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "So there were witnesses that Paul was married,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And not to anyone to be ashamed of.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Everyone had been wrong in judging Paul.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Murphy told me Paul put on all those airs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "About his wife to keep her to himself.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Paul was what’s called a terrible possessor.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Owning a wife with him meant owning her.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She wasn’t anybody else’s business,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Either to praise her, or so much as name her,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he’d thank people not to think of her.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Murphy’s idea was that a man like Paul",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wouldn’t be spoken to about a wife",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In any way the world knew how to speak.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}