By Robert Frost (1915)
I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
Analysis
Frost’s most inviting prelude makes chores into welcome. The repeated promise “I sha’n’t be gone long — You come too” models the poet’s companionable stance: small acts of care as occasions for shared attention. The lyric’s simplicity is an ethic — hospitality as poetics.