I am looking for a poem either by Robert Frost or Robert Lewis Stevenson.?

Question

It mentions a house upon a hill, and talks about a girl that goes to school everyday and fixes a house. Does anyone know the name of this poem?

Answer 1

You've got me here. If it's Stevenson (his middle name is spelled "Louis," by the way), I can come up with "The House Beautiful"; it does have a house on a hill, but I don't see the girl going to school:

Naked house, a naked moor,

A shivering pool before the door,

A garden bare of flowers and fruit

And poplars at the garden foot:

Such is the place that I live in,

Bleak without and bare within.

Yet shall your ragged moor receive

The incomparable pomp of eve,

And the cold glories of dawn

Behind your shivering trees be drawn;

And when the wind from place to place

Doth the unmoored cloud-galleons chase,

Your garden gloom and gleam again,

With leaping sun, with glancing rain.

Here shall the wizard moon ascend

The heavens, in the crimson end

Of day's declining splendour; here

The army of the stars appear.

The neighbor hollows dry or wet,

Spring shall with tender flowers beset;

And oft the morning muser see

Larks rising from the broomy lea,

And every fairy wheel and thread

Of cobweb dew-bediamonded.

When daisies go, shall winter time

Silver the simple grass with rime;

Autumnal frosts enchant the pool

And make the cart-ruts beautiful;

And when snow-bright the moor expands,

How shall your children clap their hands!

To make this earth our hermitage,

A cheerful and a changeful page,

God's bright and intricate device

Of days and seasons doth suffice.

Here's "The Hill Wife" by Robert Frost. Maybe this is what you meant?

I. LONELINESS

Her Word

One ought not to have to care

   So much as you and I

Care when the birds come round the house

   To seem to say good-bye;

Or care so much when they come back

   With whatever it is they sing;

The truth being we are as much

   Too glad for the one thing

As we are too sad for the other here --

   With birds that fill their b*****s

But with each other and themselves

   And their built or driven nests.

II. HOUSE FEAR

Always -- I tell you this they learned --

Always at night when they returned

To the lonely house from far away

To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,

They learned to rattle the lock and key

To give whatever might chance to be

Warning and time to be off in flight:

And preferring the out- to the in-door night,

They. learned to leave the house-door wide

Until they had lit the lamp inside.

III. THE SMILE

Her Word

I didn't like the way he went away.

That smile! It never came of being g*y.

Still he smiled- did you see him?- I was sure!

Perhaps because we gave him only bread

And the wretch knew from that that we were poor.

Perhaps because he let us give instead

Of seizing from us as he might have seized.

Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,

Or being very young (and he was pleased

To have a vision of us old and dead).

I wonder how far down the road he's got.

He's watching from the woods as like as not.

IV. THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM

She had no saying dark enough

   For the dark pine that kept

Forever trying the window-latch

   Of the room where they slept.

The tireless but ineffectual hands

   That with every futile pass

Made the great tree seem as a little bird

   Before the mystery of glass!

It never had been inside the room,

   And only one of the two

Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream

   Of what the tree might do.

V. THE IMPULSE

It was too lonely for her there,

   And too wild,

And since there were but two of them,

   And no child,

And work was little in the house,

   She was free,

And followed where he furrowed field,

   Or felled tree.

She rested on a log and tossed

   The fresh chips,

With a song only to herself

   On her lips.

And once she went to break a bough

   Of black alder.

She strayed so far she scarcely heard.

   When he called her --

And didn't answer -- didn't speak --

   Or return.

She stood, and then she ran and hid

   In the fern.

He never found her, though he looked

   Everywhere,

And he asked at her mother's house

   Was she there.

Sudden and swift and light as that

   The ties gave,

And he learned of finalities

  Besides the grave.

I wonder if it's this bit of Americana--a poem by someone named Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911), about whom I know almost nothing whatever except that he wrote this poem, whose final two lines of the first stanza have been put on many a sampler:

The House by the Side of the Road

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn

In the place of their self-content;

There are souls like stars, that dwell apart,

In a fellowless firmament;

There are pioneer souls that blaze the paths

Where highways never ran-

But let me live by the side of the road

And be a friend to man.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road

Where the race of men go by--

The men who are good and the men who are bad,

As good and as bad as I.

I would not sit in the scorner's seat

Nor hurl the cynic's ban--

Let me live in a house by the side of the road

And be a friend to man.

I see from my house by the side of the road

By the side of the highway of life,

The men who press with the ardor of hope,

The men who are faint with the strife,

But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,

Both parts of an infinite plan--

Let me live in a house by the side of the road

And be a friend to man.

I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead,

And mountains of wearisome height;

That the road passes on through the long afternoon

And stretches away to the night.

And still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice

And weep with the strangers that moan,

Nor live in my house by the side of the road

Like a man who dwells alone.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road,

Where the race of men go by--

They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,

Wise, foolish--so am I.

Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat,

Or hurl the cynic's ban?

Let me live in my house by the side of the road

And be a friend to man.

This is awfully corny, isn't it?