Explore "The Kitchen Chimney" by Robert Frost on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Builder, in building the little house, / In every way you may please yourself; / But please please me in the kitchen chimney: / Don't build me a chimney upon a shelf.
However far you must go for bricks, / Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound, / Buy me enough for a full-length chimney, / And build the chimney clear from the ground.
It's not that I'm greatly afraid of fire, / But I never heard of a house that throve / (And I know of one that didn't thrive)
Where the chimney started above the stove.
And I dread the ominous stain of tar / That there always is on the papered walls, / And the smell of fire drowned in rain / That there always is when the chimney's false.
A shelf's for a clock or vase or picture, / But I don't see why it should have to bear / A chimney that only would serve to remind me / Of castles I used to build in air.