Page:New Hampshire (Frost, 1923).djvu/29

Rh On coming nearer: "Wasn't she an i-deal Son-of-a-bitch? You bet she was an i-deal."

For all her mountains fall a little short, Her people not quite short enough for Art, She's still New Hampshire, a most restful state.

Lately in converse with a New York alec About the new school of the pseudo-phallic, I found myself in a close corner where I had to make an almost funny choice. "Choose you which you will be—a prude, or puke, Mewling and puking in the public arms." "Me for the hills where I don't have to choose." "But if you had to choose, which would you be?" I wouldn't be a prude afraid of nature. I know a man who took a double axe And went alone against a grove of trees; But his heart failing him, he dropped the axe And ran for shelter quoting Matthew Arnold: "Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood; There's been enough shed without shedding mine. Remember Bimam Wood! The wood's in flux!" He had a special terror of the flux That showed itself in dendrophobia. The only decent tree had been to mill And educated into boards, he said. He knew too well for any earthly use The line where man leaves off and nature starts, And never over-stepped it save in dreams.