By Robert Frost (1914)
“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 knows, but he won’t let the children go there;
And what more can one do with a man like that?
What more can one do?”
Analysis
“Blueberries” captures the warmth of neighborly talk and the miracle of nature’s renewal. Two rural speakers marvel at the sudden abundance of berries that sprouted after a forest fire, their conversation rich with local knowledge and humor. Frost’s dialogue form allows each line to ring with colloquial rhythm, blurring the boundary between everyday speech and verse. The tone is light, yet the poem carries deep reflections on growth, destruction, and the small economies of rural life.
The abundance of blueberries after burning becomes an emblem of resilience. Nature renews itself in cycles that humans barely understand, and the neighbors’ banter — half wonder, half complaint — acknowledges both generosity and mystery. Their voices reveal character through rhythm rather than declaration. Frost’s ear for the vernacular gives the poem a living texture, where talk itself becomes a communal act of survival.
Beneath its ease lies a moral awareness. The men’s gossip about soot, sweetness, and ownership reflects how people interpret nature through work and memory. “Blueberries” is not simply about fruit or landscape, but about how language reclaims the world after loss. Through shared noticing, the neighbors turn scarcity into story, transforming a burnt pasture into a vision of abundance.