ブルーベリーI（英語版） -- フロスト

内容は田舎の幼なじみの他愛もない話である。火事で牧草地が燃えたが、その焼けた畑に灰のおかげでブルーベリーが生えた。牧草地の所有者は人が出入りするのを嫌う性質であり、鳥に食わせるつもりである。だが貧乏人のローレン一家がこれに目をつけ、食料にし、残りは店に売るつもりである。一家総出で忍び込んでせっせと摘んでいる。

話者は経済的に困っているとは思えないが、ブルーベリー摘みに郷愁があった。悪がき時代の親友とブルーベリーをこっそり頂くことにした。二人の会話だけで詩は構成されている。

フロストは１００行の詩を隣り合った奇数行と偶数行を同韻（英雄韻）にしてまとめている。凄い名人芸である。

Blueberries

“YOU ought to have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson’s pasture to-day:
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!”

“I don’t know what part of the pasture you mean.”

“You know where they cut off the woods—let me see—
It was two years ago—or no!—can it be
No longer than that?—and the following fall
The fire ran and burned it all up but the wall.”

“Why, there hasn’t been time for the bushes to grow.
That’s always the way with the blueberries, though:
There may not have been the ghost of a sign
Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine,
But get the pine out of the way, you may burn
The pasture all over until not a fern
Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick,
And presto, they’re up all around you as thick
And hard to explain as a conjuror’s trick.”

“It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit.
I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot.
And after all really they’re ebony skinned:
The blue’s but a mist from the breath of the wind,
A tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand,
And less than the tan with which pickers are tanned.”

“Does Mortenson know what he has, do you think?”

“He may and not care and so leave the chewink
To gather them for him—you know what he is.
He won’t make the fact that they’re rightfully his
An excuse for keeping us other folk out.”