Explore "Spoils of the Dead" by Robert Frost on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Two fairies it was / On a still summer day / Came forth in the woods / With the flowers to play.
The flowers they plucked / They cast on the ground / For others, and those / For still others they found.
Flower-guided it was / That they came as they ran / On something that lay / In the shape of a man.
The snow must have made / The feathery bed / When this one fell / On the sleep of the dead.
But the snow was gone / A long time ago, / And the body he wore / Nigh gone with the snow.
The fairies drew near / And keenly espied / A ring on his hand / And a chain at his side.
They knelt in the leaves / And eerily played / With the glittering things, / And were not afraid.
And when they went home / To hide in their burrow, / They took them along / To play with to-morrow.
When you came on death, / Did you not come flower-guided / Like the elves in the wood?
I remember that I did.
But I recognised death / With sorrow and dread, / And I hated and hate / The spoils of the dead.