It was the best of all possible seasons for the village of Millhaven. The rains had come exactly on time, the crops had grown tall and green, and the old banyan tree at the centre of the market square had spread its great canopy wider than anyone could remember. Yet old Rajan sat on his stone step, unmoved by the abundance around him. "What is wealth," he said to his grandson, "when the heart that holds it is empty?" The boy, eight years old and restless, did not understand. He had been counting the mango trees in the orchard — seventeen, if you included the one by the well that had only just started bearing fruit. He wanted to know exactly how many mangoes they would have this year, and then he wanted to count the rupees those mangoes would bring. Old Rajan watched him and smiled — not unkindly, but with the patience of someone who has already asked all the questions the boy was asking, and has moved, slowly, to a place beyond them. "You will count," he said, "and count, and count. And then one day you will stop counting and start listening. That," he said, "is when education truly begins."

The Gift of the Magi — O. Henry (extract)

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening — Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.