There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
Many of Frost’s contemporaries toyed with the idea of fantasy, presenting unrealistic solutions to even more unrealistic situations. Magic was commonplace and realism was a thing of privilege. However, Frost often represents a shift from, what he seems to think as, ridiculousness to a more humble representation of what should be thought of as an heroic story; a laboring man. Here, Frost says “anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak,” revealing that any over-the-top fantasy would not do the laboring man justice. 
 Later, Frost goes on to say “The fit is the sweetest dream that labor knows.” In “Mowing,” one of Frost’s most glaring arguments is for humble simplicity to rule over unnatural stretches of imagination that seem to plague satisfaction with mere human existence. 
 So, do we conclude that poetry works toward an articulation of truth; of facts and simplicity? If so,  there is a paradox, because poetry is about imagination.  Without a poet to listen for ‘whispers’ there is no poem.  Without the labor of the poem, there can be no expression of the ‘sweet dream’ of fact.
Mowing