The Lockless Door

It went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I thought of the door
With no lock to lock.

I blew out the light,
I tip-toed the floor,
And raised both hands
In prayer to the door.

But the knock came again.
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill
And descended outside.

Back over the sill
I bade a “Come in”
To whatever the knock
At the door may have been.

So at a knock
I emptied my cage
To hide in the world
And alter with age.

Where this text comes from

First published in New Hampshire (1923). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1] [2] [3]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/robert-frost_new-hampshire, new-hampshire.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1#L20.

Cite this poem

Robert Frost (1874–1963). “The Lockless Door.” First published in New Hampshire (1923). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-frost/the-lockless-door/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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