{
 "id": "robert-frost/wild-grapes",
 "title": "Wild Grapes",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Hampshire",
 "book_slug": "new-hampshire",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 9,
 "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": 103,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 62,
  "max_indent": 0
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "What tree may not the fig be gathered from?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The grape may not be gathered from the birch?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s all you know the grape, or know the birch.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As a girl gathered from the birch myself",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was born, I suppose, like anyone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And grew to be a little boyish girl",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My brother could not always leave at home.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But that beginning was wiped out in fear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The day I swung suspended with the grapes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And was come after like Eurydice",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And brought down safely from the upper regions;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the life I live now’s an extra life",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I can waste as I please on whom I please.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So if you see me celebrate two birthdays,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And give myself out as two different ages,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One of them five years younger than I look⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "One day my brother led me to a glade",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where a white birch he knew of stood alone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wearing a thin head-dress of pointed leaves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And heavy on her heavy hair behind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Against her neck, an ornament of grapes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grapes, I knew grapes from having seen them last year.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One bunch of them, and there began to be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bunches all round me growing in white birches,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The way they grew round Lief the Lucky’s German;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mostly as much beyond my lifted hands, though,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As the moon used to seem when I was younger,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And only freely to be had for climbing.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My brother did the climbing; and at first",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Threw me down grapes to miss and scatter",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And have to hunt for in sweet fern and hardhack;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which gave him some time to himself to eat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But not so much, perhaps, as a boy needed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So then, to make me wholly self-supporting,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He climbed still higher and bent the tree to earth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And put it in my hands to pick my own grapes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Here, take a tree-top, I’ll get down another.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hold on with all your might when I let go.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I said I had the tree. It wasn’t true.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The opposite was true. The tree had me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The minute it was left with me alone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It caught me up as if I were the fish",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And it the fishpole. So I was translated",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To loud cries from my brother of “Let go!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Don’t you know anything, you girl? Let go!”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I, with something of the baby grip",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Acquired ancestrally in just such trees",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When wilder mothers than our wildest now",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hung babies out on branches by the hands",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To dry or wash or tan, I don’t know which",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(You’ll have to ask an evolutionist)⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I held on uncomplainingly for life.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My brother tried to make me laugh to help me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“What are you doing up there in those grapes?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Don’t be afraid. A few of them won’t hurt you.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I mean, they won’t pick you if you don’t them.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Much danger of my picking anything!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "By that time I was pretty well reduced",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To a philosophy of hang-and-let-hang.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Now you know how it feels,” my brother said,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“To be a bunch of fox-grapes, as they call them,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That when it thinks it has escaped the fox",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By growing where it shouldn’t⁠—on a birch,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where a fox wouldn’t think to look for it⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And if he looked and found it, couldn’t reach it⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Just then come you and I to gather it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only you have the advantage of the grapes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In one way: you have one more stem to cling by,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And promise more resistance to the picker.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "One by one I lost off my hat and shoes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And still I clung. I let my head fall back,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And shut my eyes against the sun, my ears",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Against my brother’s nonsense; “Drop,” he said,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“I’ll catch you in my arms. It isn’t far.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Stated in lengths of him it might not be.)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Drop or I’ll shake the tree and shake you down.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grim silence on my part as I sank lower,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My small wrists stretching till they showed the banjo strings.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Why, if she isn’t serious about it!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hold tight awhile till I think what to do.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’ll bend the tree down and let you down by it.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I don’t know much about the letting down;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But once I felt ground with my stocking feet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the world came revolving back to me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I know I looked long at my curled-up fingers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before I straightened them and brushed the bark off.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My brother said: “Don’t you weigh anything?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Try to weigh something next time, so you won’t",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be run off with by birch trees into space.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It wasn’t my not weighing anything",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So much as my not knowing anything⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My brother had been nearer right before.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I had not taken the first step in knowledge;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I had not learned to let go with the hands,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As still I have not learned to with the heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And have no wish to with the heart⁠—nor need,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I can see. The mind⁠—is not the heart.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I may yet live, as I know others live,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To wish in vain to let go with the mind⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I need learn to let go with the heart.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}