Robert Frost

The Gum-gatherer

THERE overtook me and drew me in
To his down-hill, early-morning stride,
And set me five miles on my road
Better than if he had had me ride,
A man with a swinging bag for load
And half the bag wound round his hand.
We talked like barking above the din
Of water we walked along beside.
And for my telling him where I’d been
And where I lived in mountain land
To be coming home the way I was,
He told me a little about himself.
He came from higher up in the pass
Where the grist of the new-beginning brooks
Is blocks split off the mountain mass—
And hopeless grist enough it looks
Ever to grind to soil for grass.
(The way it is will do for moss.)

Stolen land economics

Frost hints at the precarious land ownership of rural workers. 'Stolen shack' suggests informal settlements outside legal property boundaries.

There he had built his stolen shack.
It had to be a stolen shack
Because of the fears of fire and loss
That trouble the sleep of lumber folk:
Visions of half the world burned black

Logging industry fear

Lumber communities lived with constant threat of forest fires. These weren't abstract risks but existential dangers to their entire livelihood.

And the sun shrunken yellow in smoke.
We know who when they come to town
Bring berries under the wagon seat,
Or a basket of eggs between their feet;
What this man brought in a cotton sack

Mountain gum trade

Spruce gum was a real cottage industry in 19th-century New England. Gatherers would collect resin from trees and sell it as chewing gum.

Was gum, the gum of the mountain spruce.
He showed me lumps of the scented stuff
Like uncut jewels, dull and rough.
It comes to market golden brown;
But turns to pink between the teeth.

Sensory transformation

The gum physically changes color when chewed—from golden brown to pink. Frost captures a subtle material metamorphosis.

I told him this is a pleasant life
To set your breast to the bark of trees
That all your days are dim beneath,
And reaching up with a little knife,
To loose the resin and take it down
And bring it to market when you please.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Rural Labor and Landscape

Frost portrays the mountain economy through an intimate encounter between two travelers. The gum-gatherer represents a specific type of rural worker who extracts value from the landscape through manual, almost invisible labor.

The poem documents a marginal economic practice—collecting spruce gum—that was once a legitimate way of making a living in rural New England. By detailing the process of gathering, transporting, and selling gum, Frost preserves a disappearing economic strategy.

Poetic Encounter and Craft

The poem operates through a conversational narrative where details emerge gradually through dialogue. Frost uses the chance meeting to reveal complex economic and environmental relationships.

Notice how the poem moves between sensory description (the gum's color, the sound of water) and economic observation. The technical details—how gum is gathered, how it changes color—become a form of storytelling that reveals broader human experiences.