{
 "id": "robert-frost/the-black-cottage",
 "title": "The Black Cottage",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "North of Boston",
 "book_slug": "north-of-boston",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 7,
 "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": 127,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 56,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "We chanced in passing by that afternoon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To catch it in a sort of special picture",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Set well back from the road in rank lodged grass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The little cottage we were speaking of,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A front with just a door between two windows,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fresh painted by the shower a velvet black.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We paused, the minister and I, to look.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He made as if to hold it at arm’s length",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or put the leaves aside that framed it in.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Pretty,” he said. “Come in. No one will care.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The path was a vague parting in the grass",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That led us to a weathered window-sill.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We pressed our faces to the pane. “You see,” he said,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Everything’s as she left it when she died.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her sons won’t sell the house or the things in it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They say they mean to come and summer here",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where they were boys. They haven’t come this year.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They live so far away⁠—one is out west⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It will be hard for them to keep their word.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Anyway they won’t have the place disturbed.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A buttoned hair-cloth lounge spread scrolling arms",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Under a crayon portrait on the wall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Done sadly from an old daguerreotype.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“That was the father as he went to war.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She always, when she talked about war,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sooner or later came and leaned, half knelt",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Against the lounge beside it, though I doubt",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If such unlifelike lines kept power to stir",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Anything in her after all the years.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He fell at Gettysburg or Fredericksburg,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I ought to know⁠—it makes a difference which:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fredericksburg wasn’t Gettysburg, of course.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But what I’m getting to is how forsaken",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A little cottage this has always seemed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since she went more than ever, but before⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I don’t mean altogether by the lives",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That had gone out of it, the father first,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then the two sons, till she was left alone.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Nothing could draw her after those two sons.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She valued the considerate neglect",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She had at some cost taught them after years.)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I mean by the world’s having passed it by⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As we almost got by this afternoon.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It always seems to me a sort of mark",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To measure how far fifty years have brought us.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why not sit down if you are in no haste?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These doorsteps seldom have a visitor.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The warping boards pull out their own old nails",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With none to tread and put them in their place.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She had her own idea of things, the old lady.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And she liked talk. She had seen Garrison",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Whittier, and had her story of them.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One wasn’t long in learning that she thought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whatever else the Civil War was for",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It wasn’t just to keep the States together,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor just to free the slaves, though it did both.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She wouldn’t have believed those ends enough",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To have given outright for them all she gave.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her giving somehow touched the principle",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That all men are created free and equal.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to hear her quaint phrases⁠—so removed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the world’s view today of all those things.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That’s a hard mystery of Jefferson’s.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What did he mean? Of course the easy way",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is to decide it simply isn’t true.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It may not be. I heard a fellow say so.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But never mind, the Welshman got it planted",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where it will trouble us a thousand years.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each age will have to reconsider it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You couldn’t tell her what the West was saying,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And what the South to her serene belief.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She had some art of hearing and yet not",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hearing the latter wisdom of the world.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "White was the only race she ever knew.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Black she had scarcely seen, and yellow never.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But how could they be made so very unlike",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By the same hand working in the same stuff?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She had supposed the war decided that.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What are you going to do with such a person?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strange how such innocence gets its own way.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shouldn’t be surprised if in this world",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It were the force that would at last prevail.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do you know but for her there was a time",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When to please younger members of the church,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or rather say non-members in the church,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whom we all have to think of nowadays,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I would have changed the Creed a very little?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not that she ever had to ask me not to;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It never got so far as that; but the bare thought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of her old tremulous bonnet in the pew,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And of her half asleep was too much for me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why, I might wake her up and startle her.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It was the words “descended into Hades”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That seemed too pagan to our liberal youth.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You know they suffered from a general onslaught.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And well, if they weren’t true why keep right on",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Saying them like the heathen? We could drop them.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only⁠—there was the bonnet in the pew.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such a phrase couldn’t have meant much to her.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But suppose she had missed it from the Creed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As a child misses the unsaid Good-night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And falls asleep with heartache⁠—how should I feel?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’m just as glad she made me keep hands off,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For, dear me, why abandon a belief",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Merely because it ceases to be true.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It will turn true again, for so it goes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Most of the change we think we see in life",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is due to truths being in and out of favour.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wish",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I could be monarch of a desert land",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I could devote and dedicate forever",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the truths we keep coming back and back to.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So desert it would have to be, so walled",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By mountain ranges half in summer snow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No one would covet it or think it worth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The pains of conquering to force change on.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Scattered oases where men dwelt, but mostly",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sand dunes held loosely in tamarisk",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blown over and over themselves in idleness.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sand grains should sugar in the natal dew",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The babe born to the desert, the sand storm",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Retard mid-waste my cowering caravans⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“There are bees in this wall.” He struck the clapboards,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fierce heads looked out; small bodies pivoted.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We rose to go. Sunset blazed on the windows.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}