{
 "id": "robert-frost/the-star-splitter",
 "title": "The Star-Splitter",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Hampshire",
 "book_slug": "new-hampshire",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 4,
 "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",
  "corrections": [
   {
    "line": 86,
    "was": "Said some of the best things we ever said.19",
    "now": "Said some of the best things we ever said.",
    "why": "A Standard Ebooks endnote marker (<a epub:type=\"noteref\">) carried into the text by extraction; not present on the printed page.",
    "checked_against": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58611",
    "date": "2026-08-12"
   }
  ]
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 99,
  "n_stanzas": 7,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "“You know Orion always comes up sideways.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And rising on his hands, he looks in on me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I should have done by daylight, and indeed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "After the ground is frozen, I should have done",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To make fun of my way of doing things,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or else fun of Orion’s having caught me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These forces are obliged to pay respect to?”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He burned his house down for the fire insurance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And spent the proceeds on a telescope",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To satisfy a life-long curiosity",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "About our place among the infinities.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“What do you want with one of those blame things?”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I asked him well beforehand. “Don’t you get one!”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Don’t call it blamed; there isn’t anything",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More blameless in the sense of being less",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A weapon in our human fight,” he said.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“I’ll have one if I sell my farm to buy it.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There where he moved the rocks to plow the ground",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And plowed between the rocks he couldn’t move",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Few farms changed hands; so rather than spend years",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Trying to sell his farm and then not selling,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He burned his house down for the fire insurance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And bought the telescope with what it came to.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He had been heard to say by several:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“The best thing that we’re put here for’s to see;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The strongest thing that’s given us to see with’s",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A telescope. Someone in every town",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In Littleton it may as well be me.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "After such loose talk it was no surprise",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When he did what he did and burned his house down.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Mean laughter went about the town that day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To let him know we weren’t the least imposed on,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he could wait⁠—we’d see to him to-morrow.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the first thing next morning we reflected",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If one by one we counted people out",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To get so we had no one left to live with.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For to be social is to be forgiving.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our thief, the one who does our stealing from us,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We don’t cut off from coming to church suppers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But what we miss we go to him and ask for.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He promptly gives it back, that is if still",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Uneaten, unworn out, or undisposed of.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It wouldn’t do to be too hard on Brad",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "About his telescope. Beyond the age",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of being given one’s gift for Christmas,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He had to take the best way he knew how",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To find himself in one. Well, all we said was",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He took a strange thing to be roguish over.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Some sympathy was wasted on the house,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A good old-timer dating back along;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But a house isn’t sentient; the house",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Didn’t feel anything. And if it did,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why not regard it as a sacrifice,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And an old-fashioned sacrifice by fire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Instead of a new-fashioned one at auction?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Out of a house and so out of a farm",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At one stroke (of a match), Brad had to turn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To earn a living on the Concord railroad,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As under-ticket-agent at a station",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where his job, when he wasn’t selling tickets,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was setting out up track and down, not plants",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As on a farm, but planets, evening stars",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That varied in their hue from red to green.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His new job gave him leisure for star-gazing.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Often he bid me come and have a look",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At a star quaking in the other end.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I recollect a night of broken clouds",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And underfoot snow melted down to ice,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And melting further in the wind to mud.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bradford and I had out the telescope.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We spread our two legs as we spread its three,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And standing at our leisure till the day broke,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Said some of the best things we ever said.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That telescope was christened the Star-splitter,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because it didn’t do a thing but split",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A star in two or three the way you split",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A globule of quicksilver in your hand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With one stroke of your finger in the middle.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s a star-splitter if there ever was one",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And ought to do some good if splitting stars",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We’ve looked and looked, but after all where are we?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do we know any better where we are,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And how it stands between the night to-night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How different from the way it ever stood?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}