Robert Frost

The Pasture

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away

Parenthetical hesitation

The parentheses break the sentence mid-thought—Frost interrupts himself to admit he might linger. This grammatical pause mirrors the speaker actually stopping, not just passing through.

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

Sha'n't contraction

The dropped 'h' in 'sha'n't' (not 'shan't') is rural speech—this isn't formal verse about pastoral life, it's someone actually speaking. Frost uses dialect to anchor the poem in a real voice.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young.

The calf's instability

'Totters' is the only verb describing the calf's movement—it's unsteady, newly alive, dependent on the mother's touch. The word choice emphasizes vulnerability rather than cuteness.

It totters when she licks it with her tongue,
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

Sha'n't contraction

The dropped 'h' in 'sha'n't' (not 'shan't') is rural speech—this isn't formal verse about pastoral life, it's someone actually speaking. Frost uses dialect to anchor the poem in a real voice.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Why this poem opens *Complete Poems of Robert Frost*

Frost chose 'The Pasture' as the gateway to his collected work—a deliberate statement about what his poetry does. It's not dramatic or philosophical; it's an invitation to witness small, necessary rural tasks. The poem enacts what Frost believed poetry should be: a way of taking life—not transforming it into something grand, but noticing it clearly.

The two tasks (cleaning the spring, fetching the calf) are mundane farm work, but Frost treats them with the same attention others reserve for tragedy or revelation. Notice he doesn't describe the pasture as beautiful or meaningful—he simply invites you to come along. This is his method: show up, look carefully, let the ordinary speak for itself.

The grammar of inclusion

Every line moves toward that final plea: 'You come too.' Frost uses the future tense ('I'm going out') and the negative ('I sha'n't be gone long') to remove obstacles to saying yes. He's not commanding or begging—he's removing reasons to refuse.

[CONTEXT: Frost wrote this poem in 1913 for his daughter Lesley, as a prefatory poem to a collection. It reads like a parent inviting a child into work, but the invitation structure works for any reader.] The parenthetical aside in stanza one—'(And wait to watch the water clear, I may)'—is crucial: it admits that the speaker might not stick to the plan. He might get distracted by beauty. By showing his own hesitation, he makes the invitation more honest, more human. You're not being asked to participate in efficiency; you're being asked to join someone who stops to watch water clear.