Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
’Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

If I should die,
And you should live,
And time should gurgle on,
And morn should beam,
And noon should burn,
As it has usual done;
If birds should build as early,
And bees as bustling go,—
One might depart at option
From enterprise below!
’T is sweet to know that stocks will stand
When we with daisies lie,
That commerce will continue,
And trades as briskly fly.
It makes the parting tranquil
And keeps the soul serene,
That gentlemen so sprightly
Conduct the pleasing scene!

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves— 
And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—’tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity—

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in its breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from its nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, “Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be be.”

Even the bravest that are slain
     Shall not dissemble their surprise
On waking to find valor reign,
     Even as on earth, in paradise;
And where they sought without the sword
     Wide field of asphodel fore’er,
To find that the utmost reward
     Of daring should be still to dare. 

The light of heaven falls whole and white
     And is not shattered into dyes,
The light for ever is morning light;
     The hills are verdured pasture-wise;
The angel hosts with freshness go,
    And seek with laughter what to brave;—
And binding all is the hushed snow
     Of the far-distant breaking wave. 

And from a cliff-top is proclaimed
     The gathering of the souls for birth,
The trial by existence named,
     The obscuration upon earth.
And the slant spirits trooping by
     In streams and cross- and counter-streams
Can but give ear to that sweet cry
     For its suggestion of what dreams!

And the more loitering are turned 
     To view once more the sacrifice
Of those who for some good discerned
     Will gladly give up paradise.
And a white shimmering concourse rolls
     Toward the throne to witness there
The speeding of devoted souls
     Which God makes his especial care.

And none are taken but who will,
     Having first heard the life read out
That opens earthward, good and ill,
     Beyond the shadow of a doubt;
And very beautifully God limns,
     And tenderly, life’s little dream,
But naught extenuates or dims,
     Setting the thing that is supreme. 

Nor is there wanting in the press
     Some spirit to stand simply forth,
Heroic in its nakedness,
     Against the uttermost of earth.
The tale of earth’s unhonored things
     Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun;
And the mind whirls and the heart sings,
     And a shout greets the daring one.

But always God speaks at the end:
     ‘One thought in agony of strife
The bravest would have by for friend,
     The memory that he chose the life;
But the pure fate to which you go
     Admits no memory of choice,
Or the woe were not earthly woe
     To which you give the assenting voice.’

And so the choice must be again,
     But the last choice is still the same;
And the awe passes wonder then,
     And a hush falls for all acclaim.
And God has taken a flower of gold
     And broken it, and used therefrom
The mystic link to bind and hold 
     Spirit to matter till death come.

’Tis of the essence of life here,
     Though we choose greatly, still to lack
The lasting memory at all clear,
     That life has for us on the wrack
Nothing but what we somehow chose;
     Thus are we wholly stripped of pride
In the pain that has but one close,
     Bearing it crushed and mystified. 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.