Explore "In a Vale" by Robert Frost on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When I was young, we dwelt in a vale / By a misty fen that rang all night, / And thus it was the maidens pale / I knew so well, whose garments trail / Across the reeds to a window light.
The fen had every kind of bloom, / And for every kind there was a face, / And a voice that has sounded in my room / Across the sill from the outer gloom.
Each came singly unto her place, / But all came every night with the mist; / And often they brought so much to say / Of things of moment to which, they wist, / One so lonely was fain to list, / That the stars were almost faded away / Before the last went, heavy with dew, / Back to the place from which she came-
Where the bird was before it flew, / Where the flower was before it grew, / Where bird and flower were one and the same.
And thus it is I know so well / Why the flower has odor, the bird has song.
You have only to ask me, and I can tell.
No, not vainly there did I dwell, / Nor vainly listen all the night long.