essay on robert frost in 500 words

Essay on Robert Frost in English (150, 200, 250, 500 Words)

Here, we’ve presented essays on “Robert Frost” in 150, 200, 250 & 500 word samples. All the essays will be helpful for students of all classes i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 & class 12.

Table of Contents

Essay on Robert Frost in 150 Words

Introduction.

Robert Frost, an eminent American poet, captivates readers with his profound exploration of rural life and human experiences. His poetry reflects a deep connection to nature and a keen observation of the human condition. Frost’s work resonates across generations, inviting readers to contemplate life’s complexities through his simple yet profound verses.

Early Life and Influences

Frost’s formative years were shaped by the rugged landscape of New England, where he spent much of his life. Growing up on a farm, he developed a deep appreciation for nature, which later became a central theme in his poetry. Influenced by writers like Emerson and Thoreau, Frost’s early work reflects themes of individualism, self-reliance, and the inherent beauty of the natural world.

Themes in Frost’s Poetry

Frost’s poetry delves into themes of isolation, human struggle, and the passage of time. His use of vivid imagery and colloquial language creates a sense of intimacy, drawing readers into his narratives. Through his exploration of rural life, Frost captures the universal experiences of love, loss, and the search for meaning in a complex world.

In conclusion, Robert Frost’s enduring legacy lies in his ability to capture the essence of the human experience through his evocative poetry. His profound insights into nature and humanity continue to resonate with readers worldwide, making him one of the most celebrated poets of the 20th century. Frost’s timeless verses serve as a poignant reminder of the enduring power of language to illuminate the depths of the human soul.

Robert Frost Essay in 200 Words

Robert Frost, a quintessential American poet, has left an indelible mark on literature with his evocative verses that resonate with readers of all ages. His poetry, often rooted in the rural landscapes of New England, reflects a deep connection to nature and a profound understanding of the human condition.

Born in San Francisco in 1874, Frost spent his formative years in New England, where he developed a deep appreciation for the natural world. The rugged terrain and harsh winters of the region profoundly influenced his poetry, providing him with a rich tapestry of images and themes to draw upon. Additionally, Frost’s encounters with other literary giants such as Emerson and Thoreau played a significant role in shaping his poetic sensibilities.

Frost’s poetry explores themes of nature, human relationships, and the complexities of existence. Through his use of simple language and vivid imagery, he invites readers to contemplate life’s profound questions and mysteries. His poems often depict rural scenes and characters, offering glimpses into the struggles and triumphs of ordinary people.

Contribution to American Literature

Frost’s contribution to American literature extends beyond his poetry; he also served as a mentor and inspiration to countless aspiring writers. His lectures and readings captivated audiences, earning him widespread acclaim and recognition. Frost’s legacy as a literary icon endures, his words continuing to inspire and enrich the lives of readers around the world.

In conclusion, Robert Frost’s enduring significance in the literary world stems from his ability to capture the essence of the human experience with eloquence and depth. His poetry transcends time and place, resonating with readers through its universal themes and timeless wisdom. Frost’s legacy as a poet laureate of the American spirit remains unshakable, his words serving as a testament to the enduring power of the human imagination.

Essay Writing on Robert Frost in 250 Words

Robert Frost, an iconic figure in American literature, revolutionized poetry with his profound insights into the human condition and his deep reverence for nature. Born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, Frost’s formative years were marked by tragedy and struggle, yet his experiences shaped him into one of the most celebrated poets of the 20th century.

Growing up in the rural landscapes of New England, Frost developed a deep connection to nature, which became a central theme in his poetry. His encounters with writers like Emerson and Thoreau during his time at Harvard University influenced his poetic style, emphasizing individualism and self-reliance. Despite facing initial rejection, Frost persisted in his craft, publishing his first collection, “A Boy’s Will,” in 1913, followed by “North of Boston” in 1914.

Themes and Techniques

Frost’s poetry masterfully intertwines themes of isolation, mortality, and the human struggle for meaning. His use of vivid imagery and colloquial language creates an intimate connection with readers, allowing them to empathize with his characters’ joys and sorrows. Frost’s exploration of rural life and the complexities of human relationships earned him widespread acclaim, garnering four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry during his lifetime.

Legacy and Impact

Frost’s influence extends far beyond the realm of poetry; his readings and lectures captivated audiences worldwide, inspiring generations of writers and thinkers. His timeless verses continue to be studied in classrooms and recited at gatherings, affirming his enduring legacy as a literary giant.

In conclusion, Robert Frost’s contributions to American literature are immeasurable, his poetry transcending time and space to touch the hearts of readers across generations. As we reflect on his life and work, we are reminded of the enduring power of language to illuminate the human experience and to inspire us to embrace the beauty of the natural world.

Writing an Essay on Robert Frost in 500 Words

Robert Frost, born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California, is renowned as one of the most influential poets in American literary history. His poetry, deeply rooted in the rural landscapes of New England, captures the essence of the human experience with profound insight and unparalleled eloquence. Frost’s life was marked by a series of struggles and setbacks, yet his resilience and unwavering dedication to his craft propelled him to literary stardom.

Raised in the rugged terrain of New England, Frost developed a profound connection to nature, which served as a recurring theme in his poetry. His encounters with literary giants such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau during his time at Harvard University left an indelible mark on his poetic sensibilities, emphasizing the importance of individualism and self-reliance. Despite facing initial rejection and financial difficulties, Frost persevered, publishing his first collection, “A Boy’s Will,” in 1913, followed by “North of Boston” in 1914.

Evolution of Style and Themes

Frost’s poetry underwent a significant evolution over the course of his career, with his early works focusing primarily on rural life and the natural world. However, as he matured as a poet, Frost delved deeper into themes of isolation, mortality, and the complexities of human relationships. His use of vivid imagery and colloquial language created an intimate connection with readers, allowing them to empathize with his characters’ joys and sorrows.

Recognition and Awards

Frost’s literary achievements garnered widespread recognition, earning him numerous accolades throughout his lifetime. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times, in 1924, 1931, 1937, and posthumously in 1943, cementing his status as one of America’s preeminent poets. Additionally, Frost was appointed as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now known as the Poet Laureate, from 1958 to 1959.

Influence and Legacy

Frost’s impact on American literature extends far beyond his own poetry; his readings and lectures captivated audiences worldwide, inspiring generations of writers and thinkers. His timeless verses continue to be studied in classrooms and recited at gatherings, affirming his enduring legacy as a literary giant. Frost’s influence can be seen in the works of countless poets who have been inspired by his mastery of language and keen observation of the human condition.

Reflections on Nature and Humanity

At the heart of Frost’s poetry lies a profound reflection on the interconnectedness of nature and humanity. His verses invite readers to contemplate life’s mysteries and complexities, offering solace and wisdom in times of uncertainty. Frost’s ability to capture the beauty and harshness of the natural world serves as a poignant reminder of the fragility and resilience of the human spirit.

In conclusion, Robert Frost’s contributions to American literature are immeasurable, his poetry serving as a timeless testament to the enduring power of language to illuminate the human experience. As we celebrate his life and work, we are reminded of the transformative impact of art in shaping our understanding of the world and our place within it. Frost’s legacy continues to inspire and enrich the lives of readers around the globe, ensuring that his voice will echo through the ages.

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Essay, Biography or Paragraph on “Robert Frost” great author complete biography for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Robert Frost

(1874 – 1963)

Robert Frost was one of the finest of rural New England’s 20th century pastoral poets. Frost published his first books in Great Britain in the 1910s, but he soon became in his own country the most read and constantly anthologised poet. Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times. He was born in San Francisco, California on March 26, 1874. His father, a journalist and local politician, died when Frost was eleven years old. His Scottish mother resumed her career as a schoolteacher to support her family. The family hired in Lawrence, Massachusetts, with Frost’s paternal grandfather. In 1892 Frost graduated from a high-school and attended Dartmouth College for a few months. Over the next ten years he held a number of jobs. In 1 dent published Frost’s poem My Butte the New York Independent he had five poems privately printed. In 1895 he married a former schoolmate, Elinor White. Frost worked as a teacher and continued to write and publish his poems in magazines. From 1897 to 1899 Frost studied t Harvard, but left without receiving, a degree. He moved to Derry, New Hampshire, working there as a cobbler, farmer, and teacher at Pinkerton Academy and at the state normal school, in Plymouth.

In 1912 Frost published his first collection of poems, A Bay’s Will (1913) followed by North Boston (1914) , which gained international reputation. The collection contains some of Frosts best known poems: Mending Wall, The Death of the Hired Man, Home Burial, After Apple-Picking, and The Mod-Pile. He taught later at Amherst’ College (1916-38) and Michigan universities. In 1916 Frost was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In the same year appeared his third collection of verse, Mountain Interval. His wife died in 1938 and he lost four of his children. Frost also suffered from depression and continual self-doubt. After the death of his wife, Frost became strongly attracted to Kay Morrison, whom he employed as his secretary and adviser. Frost composed for her one of his finest love. poems, A Witness Tree. Frost participated in the inauguration of President John Kennedy in 1961 by reciting two of his poems. He travelled in 1962 to Soviet Union as a member .of a goodwill group. Over the years he received a remarkable number of literary and academic honours.

At the time of his death on January 29, 1963, Frost was regarded as a kind of unofficial poet laureate of the United States.

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Move to london and publication of a boy’s will, north of boston and fame, move to franconia, teaching career, and pulitzer prizes, later career.

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poem. A poet in a Heian period kimono writes Japanese poetry during the Kamo Kyokusui No En Ancient Festival at Jonan-gu shrine on April 29, 2013 in Kyoto, Japan. Festival of Kyokusui-no Utage orignated in 1,182, party Heian era (794-1192).

Robert Frost

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Table Of Contents

When was Robert Frost born, and when did he die?

Robert Frost was born in 1874, and he died in 1963 at the age of 88.

Who were Robert Frost’s children, and when did they live?

Elliott was born in 1896 and died of cholera in 1900. Lesley lived 1899–1983. Carol was born in 1902 and committed suicide in 1940. Irma lived 1903–67. Marjorie was born in 1905 and died from childbirth in 1934. Elinor was born in 1907 and lived only three days.

What was Robert Frost known for?

Robert Frost was known for his depictions of rural New England life, his grasp of colloquial speech, and his poetry about ordinary people in everyday situations.

What were Robert Frost’s most famous poems?

Robert Frost’s most famous poems included “The Gift Outright,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Birches,” “Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Taken,” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

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Robert Frost (born March 26, 1874, San Francisco, California, U.S.—died January 29, 1963, Boston, Massachusetts) was an American poet who was much admired for his depictions of the rural life of New England , his command of American colloquial speech, and his realistic verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations. He was the most highly honored American poet of the 20th century, receiving the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times. Several of his poems yielded lines that became indelible in the American consciousness , among them “Good fences make good neighbors” (from “ Mending Wall ”), “And miles to go before I sleep” (from “ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening ”), and “I took the one less traveled by” (from “ The Road Not Taken ”).

Frost’s father, William Prescott Frost, Jr., was a journalist with ambitions of establishing a career in California , and in 1873 he and his wife moved to San Francisco . Her husband’s untimely death from tuberculosis in 1885 prompted Isabelle Moodie Frost to take her two children, Robert and Jeanie, to Lawrence , Massachusetts , where they were taken in by the children’s paternal grandparents. While their mother taught at a variety of schools in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Robert and Jeanie grew up in Lawrence, and Robert graduated from high school in 1892. A top student in his class, he shared valedictorian honors with Elinor White, with whom he had already fallen in love.

Robert and Elinor shared a deep interest in poetry, but their continued education sent Robert to Dartmouth College and Elinor to St. Lawrence University. Meanwhile, Robert continued to labor on the poetic career he had begun in a small way during high school. He first achieved professional publication in 1894 when The Independent , a weekly literary journal, printed his poem “ My Butterfly: An Elegy .”

Of Frost’s six children, only two survived him: Lesley Frost Ballantine, who became an author of children’s books , and Irma Frost Cone, who was institutionalized in a mental hospital in 1947, where she remained for the rest of her life.

Elliott Frost: born September 25, 1896—died July 8, 1900 (of cholera )
Lesley Frost Ballantine: born April 28, 1899—died July 9, 1983
Carol Frost: born May 22, 1902—died October 9, 1940 (of a self-inflicted gunshot wound)
Irma Frost Cone: born June 27, 1903—died April 12, 1981
Marjorie Frost Fraser: born March 29, 1905—died May 2, 1934 (of puerperal fever after childbirth )
Elinor Bettina Frost: born June 18, 1907—died June 21, 1907

Impatient with academic routine, Frost left Dartmouth after less than a year. He and Elinor married in 1895 but found life difficult, and the young poet supported them by teaching school and farming, neither with notable success. During the next dozen years, six children were born, one of whom died in infancy (Elinor Bettina) and another before age four (Elliott), leaving a family of one son (Carol) and three daughters (Lesley, Irma, and Marjorie). Frost resumed his college education at Harvard University in 1897 but left after two years’ study there.

Illustration of "The Lamb" from "Songs of Innocence" by William Blake, 1879. poem; poetry

From 1900 to 1909 the family raised poultry on a farm near Derry , New Hampshire , and for a time Frost also taught at the Pinkerton Academy in Derry. Frost became an enthusiastic botanist and acquired his poetic persona of a New England rural sage during the years he and his family spent at Derry. All this while he was writing poems, but publishing outlets showed little interest in them.

By 1911 Frost was fighting against discouragement. Poetry had always been considered a young person’s game, and Frost, who was nearly 40 years old, had not published a single book of poems and had seen just a handful appear in magazines. In 1911 ownership of the Derry farm passed to Frost. A momentous decision was made: to sell the farm and use the proceeds to make a radical new start in London , where publishers were perceived to be more receptive to new talent.

Accordingly, in August 1912 the Frost family sailed across the Atlantic to England . Frost carried with him sheaves of verses he had written but not gotten into print. English publishers in London did indeed prove more receptive to innovative verse, and, through his own vigorous efforts and those of the expatriate American poet Ezra Pound , Frost within a year had published A Boy’s Will (1913). From this first book,such poems as “Storm Fear,” “The Tuft of Flowers,” and “Mowing” became standard anthology pieces.

A Boy’s Will was followed in 1914 by a second collection, North of Boston , that introduced some of the most popular poems in all of Frost’s work, among them “Mending Wall,” “The Death of the Hired Man,” “Home Burial,” and “ After Apple-Picking.” In London, Frost’s name was frequently mentioned by those who followed the course of modern literature , and soon American visitors were returning home with news of this unknown poet who was causing a sensation abroad. The Boston poet Amy Lowell traveled to England in 1914, and in the bookstores there she encountered Frost’s work. Taking his books home to America, Lowell then began a campaign to locate an American publisher for them, meanwhile writing her own laudatory review of North of Boston .

Without his being fully aware of it, Frost was on his way to fame. The outbreak of World War I brought the Frosts back to the United States in 1915. By then Amy Lowell’s review had already appeared in The New Republic , and writers and publishers throughout the Northeast were aware that a writer of unusual abilities stood in their midst. The American publishing house of Henry Holt had brought out its edition of North of Boston in 1914. It became a best-seller, and, by the time the Frost family landed in Boston, Holt was adding the American edition of A Boy’s Will . Frost soon found himself besieged by magazines seeking to publish his poems. Never before had an American poet achieved such rapid fame after such a disheartening delay. From this moment his career rose on an ascending curve.

1924: New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes
1931: Collected Poems
1937: A Further Range
1943: A Witness Tree

Frost bought a small farm at Franconia, New Hampshire, in 1915, but his income from both poetry and farming proved inadequate to support his family, and so he lectured and taught part-time at Amherst College and at the University of Michigan from 1916 to 1938. Any remaining doubt about his poetic abilities was dispelled by the collection Mountain Interval (1916), which continued the high level established by his first books. His reputation was further enhanced by New Hampshire (1923), which received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. That prize was also awarded to Frost’s Collected Poems (1930) and to the collections A Further Range (1936) and A Witness Tree (1942). His other poetry volumes include West-Running Brook (1928), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962).

Frost’s wife, Elinor, died of heart failure in 1938 at their winter home in Gainesville , Florida . Frost served as a poet-in-residence at Harvard (1939–43), Dartmouth (1943–49), and Amherst College (1949–63), and in his old age he gathered honors and awards from every quarter. He was the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (1958–59; the post was later styled poet laureate consultant in poetry), and his recital of his poem “The Gift Outright” at the inauguration of Pres. John F. Kennedy in 1961 was a memorable occasion .

The life of Robert Frost Research Paper

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What influenced him to write poetry

“the road not taken”, “the fire and ice”, reference list.

Robert Frost, a prominent American poet, stands out as one of the pioneers and contributors in the art of poetry. In his poems he uses the New England characters, expressions, and even setting to send out his message through the art. Robert Frost “was born on 26 March 1874 in San Francisco California” (William, 2001).

As a way of acknowledging the southern hero general Robert Lee (1807-1870) his parents decided to call their first son Robert. Frost faced a test of time when his father passed away in 1885. They were not sure whether their travel to Massachusetts for funeral would enable them to live on properly, as they did not have funds to travel back to California. Frost’s grandfather offered them a home. Her mother eventually secured a job as a teacher.

In his early years Frost loved to listen to his mother read to him, which led to his exposure to a variety of literary works as he gained inspiration to read. Although at first Frost lacked enthusiasm in his elementary studies, he managed to work hard finally graduating from Lawrence high school as the top student as well as the class poet in 1892.

Frost became an editor of the high school Bulletin after his poem “La Noche Triste” which was published in the Bulletin in 1890. Frost was inspired to write the poem by Prescott’s famous History of the Conquest of Mexico (William, 2001). In 1894 Frost’s first professional poem “My Butterfly” was published in Independent, New York (“Robert Frost”).

In 1895 Frost married his love, Elinor Miriam White, and tried to advance his career in teaching (“Robert Frost”). He helped his mother in managing her private school in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where his first son was born. Life turned out difficult especially for Frost, as he tried to balance his studies in Harvard, at the same time providing for his family.

Therefore, he decided to venture in poultry farming in Methuen. Following his tuberculosis diagnosis in 1900, he decided to move his poultry farming to Derry, New Hampshire as his son unfortunately succumbed to death (William, 2001). Frost was also warned about possible threat of tuberculosis. Eventually, Frost and his family decided to move to Buckinghamshire in England in 1912.

However, in 1914 the poet had to leave Britain for the United States due to financial constraints. There Frost was announced “a leading voice of the “new poetry” movement” (William, 2001). He received assistance from the American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and many other people who inspired him. There he wrote his poem “A Boy’s Will” which received a warm welcome after publication.

Though scared of crowds, Frost became a public figure wining various prizes in the area of poetry. He died on January 29, 1963 in Boston Massachusetts following some complications after an operation. However, he has left many resources for the upcoming poets and the society.

Frost’s poetry writing dates back to his early life as a young boy. His motivation to dedicate his life to literature resulted from his love of listening to his mother’s reading of stories. Therefore, his love to poetry and literature was nurtured and cultivated by his mother while he was still growing.

Furthermore, his topping in class coupled with the publishing of his poem in the school Bulletin contributed to his interests in the area of poetry. The fact that he performed well to lead all the class in poetry illustrated how impeccable he was in poetry. Frost ventured in writing after the appearance of his poem “My Butterfly” in the New York Independent magazine (“Robert Frost”).

This actually motivated him as he got some income from the poems he sold to magazines and therefore was able to provide for himself as well as for his family. Frost’s father was a journalist, a fact that contributed to his studying in the same line.

Frost’s wife Elinor also provided a sense of inspiration to the nurturing and development of his writing skills and preference. His wife had a good background in writing poems and therefore she had an interest in writing. Her love for poetry played a bigger role in enhancing Frost’s development and advancements in writing.

It goes without saying that love to his wife was one of the most potent inspirations for Frost (“Robert Frost”). Noteworthy, during his life Frost met many prominent poets which influenced him a lot when it came to poetry. These poets were Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas and Robert Graves among others. They nurtured him by offering assistance and guidance in developing his writing skills in poetry.

These poets provided a strong background and basis for his poetry as their reputation and experience in the field was remarkable and known by many people. They set a good playing ground for the rest of Frost’s poetry and writing career. Furthermore, Frost’s friendship with Pound Ezra influenced his writing profession. Pound assisted Frost in the promotion of his poems, which motivated him to keep on working hard in this area.

The support from other people also influenced him positively as his work gained acceptance influencing the lives of people. As result, Frost received several prizes because of producing good work. These awards still made him forge on producing good quality poems like “The Road Not Taken”.

What it Means

“The Road Not Taken” forms part of his early poems that confuses many readers in terms of the implication or the meaning he intended to air out. The poem addresses the issue of indecisiveness. For instance, the author stands in woods unable to decide the right path that can lead him to the direction or the destination he wants.

This indecisiveness comes out clearly in the second line “And sorry I could not travel both” that shows how the author admits impossibility of traveling on both roads (“The Road Not Taken”). Therefore, a decision should be made that will enable him to achieve or rather reach the preferred and intended destination.

The ways the author wants to choose seem worn-out with un-trodden leaves covering them. He therefore decides to take one of them with the hope that he will take the other way some other time. Though the poet cannot tell the time and the moment that he will take, which is illustrated in the following line: “then took the other, as just as fair”.

The poem also has the implication that someday, when Frost recalls the decision he took, he will twist it a little bit by claiming that he took the road less traveled as illustrated in the last verse of the poem, “I shall be telling with a sign… I took the one less travelled by” (“The Road Not Taken”).

Therefore, the poem addresses the life’s challenges and problems showing how people go about choosing the right decisions. Some decisions, which people embark on, can have great implications changing everything. Furthermore, the poet articulates an opinion that people are free to choose their fate since the routes that they choose are the result of their own choice and chance (Finger, 1978, p. 478).

The author uses forks in the roads and paths in the woods as metaphorical figures of speech to imply the decisions and the crises people always encounter. People usually face difficult times at one stage or another in their day-to-day lives. These problems come through various things like crises, conflicts, regardless of which a decision must arise to ensure that they meet what they intended to.

Frost tries to assert that regardless of these, a choice must exist though irreversible, sometimes following the lack of provision of a second chance. These decisions, he goes further to say, may provide a basis for people to witness changes or differences either positive or negative as illustrated in the last line “and that has made all the difference” (“The Road Not Taken”).

Therefore, to sum up, the author implies that all people have the freedom to choose the kind of way that they feel will enable them to reach their destination or achieve their objectives. The choice of an individual may not necessarily be similar to those of others. When time elapses the decisions that people make may not apply in the current times, dominated by changes requiring them to twist and adapt to the status in order for them to suit.

The entire poem therefore declares sacrifices, determination, perseverance and endurances as the basis for gaining success, fame and even wealth and popularity. These require a lot of dedication on the part of the person, regardless of the obstacles and problems or challenges that one faces (Watts, 1955, p. 69). Without sacrificing and clearly defining the destiny or the purpose that one wants, it is difficult to achieve his/her desires in life.

The poet therefore suggests optimism, persistence, and consistency of people as a way of achieving their desires. Time comes when one sits back to look at what he/she has reached without any hiccups; time when an individual meditates the difference he/she has created in the life of other people. The poem is didactic since it encourages people to work hard for them to achieve their goals irrespective of the obstacles they might face. People should choose their own destinies.

Why Frost Wrote It

The motivation of writing the poem “The Road not Taken” comes from Frost’s own life experiences, and how he faced various problems and how he successfully managed to solve them. The poem illustrates his zeal and ambition to make success as an individual. The poet decided to make a decision knowing clearly what exactly he wanted to achieve.

For instance, the lines “Then took the other, as just as fair, / And having perhaps the better claim” suggests the vision and the results the author had in choosing his way in poetry, a field which people did not want to venture at that time (“The Road Not Taken”). The profession requires a lot of dedication, creativity in writing, thoughtful observation, revision, editing among other things, which many people would not manage.

However, his effort and dedication in pursuing poetry brought him some difference, which he will sigh, to the coming generations. For instance, he chooses to illustrate the fact that not many people do prefer to pursue the field: “I took the one less travelled by, / And that has made all the difference.” Such lines provided a hint to why the author decided to venture in field. He understood that one could not achieve fame or wealth without his/her input and sacrifice.

Therefore, he was motivated to write this poem in order to educate people on how the actions they make can affect their lives. That success or any other good things do not come that easy. Hard work and sacrifice acts as a basis of success, wealth and even fame that many wish to have.

“The Fire and Ice” though short, postulates the commonest queries people ask. These questions concern the fate or the future of the world. Many people living in that period were in awe whether the world would end or would be destroyed by ice or fire (Tuten and Zubizarreta, 2001, 112). Through the poem Frost joins the debate by providing his side of coin through his opinions on his take or perspective on the ending of the world.

The poet has an opinion that the world will end with fire as consideration of his personal experience with passion and desire and the emotions brought about by fire. Contrary, he claims that the world will end in ice or hatred after considering his experiences for a second time. Consequently, the poem acknowledges that both are equally destructive. Frost begins by presenting the view of people in the poem concerning how they feel or think the world will end.

The poet points out that, although some differences do occur between different people about the fate of the world, the truth will stand out and will not hinge on someone as illustrated in the following line “some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice”. He therefore provides the reader with different perspectives held by people on what they think will end the world.

Frost then presents his own views about the issue of the end of the world: “from what I’ve tasted of desire, / I hold within those who favor fire.” He equates fire to desire but consequently equates hate to ice (Little & Bloom, 2009, p. 175). Therefore, according to his views, both have an equal chance of destroying the world. To conclude, Frost through the line “And would suffice” sums up his take on the end of the world affirming that the end of world is fire.

The poet also claims that the repercussions will be equal whether it will end with fire or ice. The outcome will remain same and deterioration of humanity is inevitable. The poem postulates the agony and the way that people try to unravel, but in vein. It is a secret that dates back to the ancient times with no person gathering any evidence to affirm that the end of the world will take a certain form (Bassett, 1981, p. 41). Similarly, during Frost’s times, similar to the current world, people agonized and discussed these mysteries.

Admittedly, “Ice and Fire” is Frost’s respond to the questions which were in the air. Frost aimed at shifting gears from looking at the end of world in a scientific perspective to an emotional side by comparing passionate desire with fire and hatred with ice (O’Donnell, 1998).

These two elements can metaphorically represent the world “recognized as a metaphor for relationships” (Hansen, 2000, p. 27). Therefore, a relationship is equally destroyed by fire or cold, too much passion or hate. Therefore, the author seems to be inspired by his own life experience in terms of facing the realities of life, as he encountered both passion and some indifference.

In conclusion, it is possible to point out that Robert Frost lived a long life full of love, pleasantries, fame, misery and losses. He revealed his life experiences in his poetry which is inspiring and didactic. Forest articulates his ideas concerning many issues in his poems. Sometimes he is quite pessimistic regarding his ideas about the end of the world. Nonetheless, it is possible to state that in his works Frost revealed his firm belief that it is necessary to appreciate the beauty of life no matter what difficulties one can face.

Bassett, F. (1981). Frost’s The Road Not Taken. Explicator , 39(3), 41-43.

Finger, L. (1978). Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’: A 1925 Letter Come to Light. American Literature , 50(3), 478-479.

Hansen, T. (2000). Frost’s “Fire and Ice”. Explicator , 59(1), 27-30.

Little, M.R., and Bloom, H. (2009). Bloom’s How to Write about Robert Frost. New York: Infobase Publishing.

O’Donnell, W.G. (1998). Talking about Poems with Robert Frost. Massachusetts Review , 39(2), 225-250.

Robert Frost . (n.d.). The Academy of American Poets. Web.

“ The Road Not Taken ”. (n.d.). The Academy of American Poets. Web.

Watts, H. (1955). Robert Frost and the Interrupted. Dialogue. American Literature , 27(1), 69-87.

William, H. (2001). Frost’s Life and Career. Modern American Poetry . Web.

Tuten, N.L., and Zubizarreta, J. (2001). The Robert Frost Encyclopedia. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.

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Robert Frost

Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, where his father, William Prescott Frost, Jr., and his mother, Isabelle Moodie, had moved from Pennsylvania shortly after marrying. After the death of his father from tuberculosis when Frost was eleven years old, he moved with his mother and sister, Jeanie, who was two years younger, to Lawrence, Massachusetts. He became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, enrolled at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1892 and, later, at Harvard University, though he never earned a formal degree.

Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel . His first published poem, “My Butterfly,” appeared on November 8, 1894 in the New York newspaper The Independent .

In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, with whom he’d shared valedictorian honors in high school, and who was a major inspiration for his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after they tried and failed at farming in New Hampshire. It was abroad where Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas , Rupert Brooke , and Robert Graves . While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound , who helped to promote and publish his work.

By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections, A Boy’s Will (Henry Holt and Company, 1913) and North of Boston (Henry Holt and Company, 1914), thereby establishing his reputation. By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poets in America, and with each new book—including New Hampshire (Henry Holt and Company, 1923), A Further Range (Henry Holt and Company, 1936), Steeple Bush (Henry Holt and Company, 1947), and In the Clearing (Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1962)—his fame and honors, including four Pulitzer Prizes, increased. Frost served as a consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress from 1958–59. In 1962, he was presented the Congressional Gold Medal.

Though Frost’s work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England—and, though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time—Frost is anything but merely a regional poet. The author of searching, and often dark, meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.

In a 1970 review of The Poetry of Robert Frost , the poet Daniel Hoffman describes Frost’s early work as “the Puritan ethic turned astonishingly lyrical and enabled to say out loud the sources of its own delight in the world,” and comments on Frost’s career as the “American Bard”: “He became a national celebrity, our nearly official poet laureate, and a great performer in the tradition of that earlier master of the literary vernacular, Mark Twain.”

President John F. Kennedy, at whose inauguration Frost delivered a poem, said of the poet, “He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding.” And famously, “He saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”

Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963.

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Explore the beauty of poetry – discover the poet within

A Short Biography Of Robert Frost

Robert Frost is one of the most renowned and celebrated poets of the 20th century. Born in San Francisco in 1874, he was raised in a working-class family and started writing poetry while attending both high school and college in Massachusetts. He served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1958 to 1963, and is a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Frost’s works explore themes of nature, rural life and human relationships; they often use traditional forms such as sonnets and villanelles, as well as free-verse compositions.

The power of Frost’s verse lies in his use of colloquial language which speaks to the everyday experience of his readers. He was also highly influenced by New England writers including Edward Taylor, Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and incorporated many of their ideas and techniques into his own work. Frost’s classic works include ‘The Road Not Taken’, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ and ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’.

Frost was an acclaimed poet in his lifetime and was described by friends and critics alike as a genius and an American master. In addition to his Pulitzer Prizes, he was awarded numerous honorary degrees and fellowships, and was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960. Frost’s life and work have been widely celebrated and have helped to define American poetry.

Frost continued publishing poems and books of poetry until his death in 1963. After being affected by health problems in the last five years of his life, he passed away in Boston at the age of 88. Robert Frost’s poetic legacy is significant, and he is remembered today as one of the most important American poets to ever live.

Early Life and Education

Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, to Isabelle and William Prescott Frost, Jr. His father died when Frost was 11, and he was raised by his mother and stepfather who was a teacher.

At the age of 15, Frost started attending high school in Lawrence, Massachusetts. During his high school years, he published poems in the Lawrence High School newspaper. After graduating high school in 1892, he attended Dartmouth College for two months and later, Harvard for one semester.

In 1895, Frost returned to Lawrence and focused on writing poetry. He married Elinor Miriam White in 1895 and they had six children together. In 1897, Frost left Lawrence to teach at the New Hampshire State Normal School in Plymouth, New Hampshire where he experimented with his poetry and developed his own poetic style.

Frost was highly influenced by the writings of Emerson, Whitman and Edward Taylor. In 1912, he began submitting his poetry and soon after, several of his poems were published in nationally-renowned magazines.

Career and Major Works

In 1913, Frost and his family moved to England in search of a better literary atmosphere. While in England, he wrote and published his first book of poems, ‘A Boy’s Will’. This book was highly acclaimed in Britain but did not gain recognition in the U.S. until 1915. Later poetry books such as ‘North of Boston’ (1914) and ‘Mountain Interval’ (1916) shocked readers with their unconventional use of language and themes.

In 1920, Frost returned to the U.S., and soon after he began winning recognition, awards, lectureships and honorary degrees. Over the next few decades, he wrote and published numerous books of poetry, and also established himself as a literary lecturer. In 1938, he presented a lecture at the Library of Congress that received national attention.

In 1936, he was teaching at Amherst College, and soon after, he began teaching at Harvard and University of Michigan. During this period, he wrote ‘A Witness Tree’ (1942) and ‘Steeple Bush’ (1947). His poems from this period reflect his newfound faith in human kindness and optimism. Frost’s last book of poems, ‘In the Clearing’, was published in 1962.

Awards and Achievements

Frost has won numerous awards and honorary titles throughout his stellar career. He was awarded four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry between 1924 and 1943, and four Special Citations from the Pulitzer Prize Board between 1944 and 1954. The U.S. government also awarded him with a Grant in Aid of Arts, Letters and Humanities in 1954. In 1958, he became the Poet Laureate of the United States and was also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1960, Frost was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. He is the only person to receive this honor without first serving in a political or military capacity. Several colleges, universities and public buildings are named for him, including at Amherst College and the University of Michigan.

After his death in 1963, Frost’s legacy has only grown stronger. His poems are now required reading in many schools, and he continues to be one of the most studied and influential poets of all time. His work is part of the literary canon of the U.S. and beyond, and has been adapted for the stage, television and film.

Frost’s work is known for its accessible language and its subtle exploration of timeless themes. His poems make use of traditional poetic forms while speaking to the everyday experience of life. He had a deep appreciation for nature and the interconnectedness of life, and these ideas are omnipresent in his poetry. Robert Frost remains a symbol of poetic excellence and a source of inspiration for many writers.

Famous Quotes

Because of his lifelong appreciation of language, Frost left behind many famous quotations. Some of his most well-known quotes include: “The best way out is always through”, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on”, “A poet never takes notes; you never take notes in a love affair” and “A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age”.

Influence on American Poetry

Frost was a leading figure in American poetry and was hugely influential to poets from many different generations. He had a lifelong love of language and believed that it should be accessible to everyone. His free-verse style of writing resonates with readers and is often cited as a major influence on modern poets. Frost’s work is a symbol of American poetry, and is required reading in many schools.

The widespread appreciation of Frost’s work can be attributed to his accessible language and his profound insights into human relationships. He is considered one of the most important American poets of all time, and his legacy continues to shape American poetry and literature.

Dannah Hannah is an established poet and author who loves to write about the beauty and power of poetry. She has published several collections of her own works, as well as articles and reviews on poets she admires. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English, with a specialization in poetics, from the University of Toronto. Hannah was also a panelist for the 2017 Futurepoem book Poetry + Social Justice, which aimed to bring attention to activism through poetry. She lives in Toronto, Canada, where she continues to write and explore the depths of poetry and its influence on our lives.

Robert Frost

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, but his family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1884 following his father’s death. The move was actually a return, for Frost’s ancestors were originally New Englanders, and Frost became famous for his poetry’s engagement with New England locales, identities, and themes. Frost graduated from Lawrence High School, in 1892, as class poet (he also shared the honor of co-valedictorian with his wife-to-be Elinor White), and two years later, the New York Independent accepted his poem entitled “My Butterfly,” launching his status as a professional poet with a check for $15.00. Frost's first book was published around the age of 40, but he would go on to win a record four Pulitzer Prizes and become the most famous poet of his time, before his death at the age of 88. To celebrate his first publication, Frost had a book of six poems privately printed; two copies of Twilight were made—one for himself and one for his fiancee. Over the next eight years, however, he succeeded in having only 13 more poems published. During this time, Frost sporadically attended Dartmouth and Harvard and earned a living teaching school and, later, working a farm in Derry, New Hampshire. But in 1912, discouraged by American magazines’ constant rejection of his work, he took his family to England, where he found more professional success. Continuing to write about New England, he had two books published, A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914) , which established his reputation so that his return to the United States in 1915 was as a celebrated literary figure. Holt put out an American edition of North of Boston in 1915 , and periodicals that had once scorned his work now sought it. Frost’s position in American letters was cemented with the publication of North of Boston, and in the years before his death he came to be considered the unofficial poet laureate of the United States. On his 75th birthday, the US Senate passed a resolution in his honor which said, “His poems have helped to guide American thought and humor and wisdom, setting forth to our minds a reliable representation of ourselves and of all men.” In 1955, the State of Vermont named a mountain after him in Ripton, the town of his legal residence; and at the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961, Frost was given the unprecedented honor of being asked to read a poem. Frost wrote a poem called “Dedication” for the occasion, but could not read it given the day’s harsh sunlight. He instead recited “The Gift Outright,” which Kennedy had originally asked him to read, with a revised, more forward-looking, last line. Though Frost allied himself with no literary school or movement, the imagists helped at the start to promote his American reputation. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse published his work before others began to clamor for it. It also published a review by Ezra Pound of the British edition of A Boy’s Will, which Pound said “has the tang of the New Hampshire woods, and it has just this utter sincerity. It is not post-Miltonic or post-Swinburnian or post Kiplonian. This man has the good sense to speak naturally and to paint the thing, the thing as he sees it.” Amy Lowell reviewed North of Boston in the New Republic, and she, too, sang Frost’s praises: “He writes in classic metres in a way to set the teeth of all the poets of the older schools on edge; and he writes in classic metres, and uses inversions and cliches whenever he pleases, those devices so abhorred by the newest generation. He goes his own way, regardless of anyone else’s rules, and the result is a book of unusual power and sincerity.” In these first two volumes, Frost introduced not only his affection for New England themes and his unique blend of traditional meters and colloquialism, but also his use of dramatic monologues and dialogues. “ Mending Wall ,” the leading poem in North of Boston, describes the friendly argument between the speaker and his neighbor as they walk along their common wall replacing fallen stones; their differing attitudes toward “boundaries” offer symbolic significance typical of the poems in these early collections. Mountain Interval marked Frost’s turn to another kind of poem, a brief meditation sparked by an object, person or event. Like the monologues and dialogues, these short pieces have a dramatic quality. “Birches,” discussed above, is an example, as is “ The Road Not Taken ,” in which a fork in a woodland path transcends the specific. The distinction of this volume, the Boston Transcript said, “is that Mr. Frost takes the lyricism of A Boy’s Will and plays a deeper music and gives a more intricate variety of experience.” Several new qualities emerged in Frost’s work with the appearance of New Hampshire (1923) , particularly a new self-consciousness and willingness to speak of himself and his art. The volume, for which Frost won his first Pulitzer Prize, “pretends to be nothing but a long poem with notes and grace notes,” as Louis Untermeyer described it. The title poem, approximately fourteen pages long, is a “rambling tribute” to Frost’s favorite state and “is starred and dotted with scientific numerals in the manner of the most profound treatise.” Thus, a footnote at the end of a line of poetry will refer the reader to another poem seemingly inserted to merely reinforce the text of “New Hampshire.” Some of these poems are in the form of epigrams, which appear for the first time in Frost’s work. “ Fire and Ice ,” for example, one of the better known epigrams, speculates on the means by which the world will end. Frost’s most famous and, according to J. McBride Dabbs, most perfect lyric, “ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening ,” is also included in this collection; conveying “the insistent whisper of death at the heart of life,” the poem portrays a speaker who stops his sleigh in the midst of a snowy woods only to be called from the inviting gloom by the recollection of practical duties. Frost himself said of this poem that it is the kind he’d like to print on one page followed with “forty pages of footnotes.” West-Running Brook (1928) , Frost’s fifth book of poems, is divided into six sections, one of which is taken up entirely by the title poem. This poem refers to a brook which perversely flows west instead of east to the Atlantic like all other brooks. A comparison is set up between the brook and the poem’s speaker who trusts himself to go by “contraries”; further rebellious elements exemplified by the brook give expression to an eccentric individualism, Frost’s stoic theme of resistance and self-realization. Reviewing the collection in the New York Herald Tribune, Babette Deutsch wrote: “The courage that is bred by a dark sense of Fate, the tenderness that broods over mankind in all its blindness and absurdity, the vision that comes to rest as fully on kitchen smoke and lapsing snow as on mountains and stars—these are his, and in his seemingly casual poetry, he quietly makes them ours.” A Further Range (1936) , which earned Frost another Pulitzer Prize and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, contains two groups of poems subtitled “Taken Doubly” and “Taken Singly.” In the first, and more interesting, of these groups, the poems are somewhat didactic, though there are humorous and satiric pieces as well. Included here is “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” which opens with the story of two itinerant lumbermen who offer to cut the speaker’s wood for pay; the poem then develops into a sermon on the relationship between work and play, vocation and avocation, preaching the necessity to unite them. Of the entire volume, William Rose Benét wrote, “It is better worth reading than nine-tenths of the books that will come your way this year. In a time when all kinds of insanity are assailing the nations it is good to listen to this quiet humor, even about a hen, a hornet, or Square Matthew. ... And if anybody should ask me why I still believe in my land, I have only to put this book in his hand and answer, ‘Well-here is a man of my country.’” Most critics acknowledge that Frost’s poetry in the 1940s and '50s grew more and more abstract, cryptic, and even sententious, so it is generally on the basis of his earlier work that he is judged. His politics and religious faith, hitherto informed by skepticism and local color, became more and more the guiding principles of his work. He had been, as Randall Jarrell points out, “a very odd and very radical radical when young” yet became “sometimes callously and unimaginatively conservative” in his old age. He had become a public figure, and in the years before his death, much of his poetry was written from this stance. Reviewing A Witness Tree (1942) in Books, Wilbert Snow noted a few poems “which have a right to stand with the best things he has written”: “Come In,” “The Silken Tent,” and “Carpe Diem” especially. Yet Snow went on: “Some of the poems here are little more than rhymed fancies; others lack the bullet-like unity of structure to be found in North of Boston. ” On the other hand, Stephen Vincent Benet felt that Frost had “never written any better poems than some of those in this book.” Similarly, critics were let down by In the Clearing (1962) . One wrote, “Although this reviewer considers Robert Frost to be the foremost contemporary U.S. poet, he regretfully must state that most of the poems in this new volume are disappointing. ... [They] often are closer to jingles than to the memorable poetry we associate with his name.” Another maintained that “the bulk of the book consists of poems of ‘philosophic talk.’ Whether you like them or not depends mostly on whether you share the ‘philosophy.’” Indeed, many readers do share Frost’s philosophy, and still others who do not nevertheless continue to find delight and significance in his large body of poetry. In October, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech at the dedication of the Robert Frost Library in Amherst, Massachusetts. “In honoring Robert Frost,” the President said, “we therefore can pay honor to the deepest source of our national strength. That strength takes many forms and the most obvious forms are not always the most significant. ... Our national strength matters; but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost.” The poet would probably have been pleased by such recognition, for he had said once, in an interview with Harvey Breit: “One thing I care about, and wish young people could care about, is taking poetry as the first form of understanding. If poetry isn’t understanding all, the whole world, then it isn’t worth anything.” Frost’s poetry is revered to this day. When a previously unknown poem by Frost titled “War Thoughts at Home,” was discovered and dated to 1918, it was subsequently published in the Fall 2006 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review. The first edition Frost’s Notebooks were published in 2009, and thousands of errors were corrected in the paperback edition years later. A critical edition of his Collected Prose was published in 2010 to broad critical acclaim. A multi-volume series of his Collected Letters is now in production, with the first volume appearing in 2014 and the second in 2016. Robert Frost continues to hold a unique and almost isolated position in American letters. “Though his career fully spans the modern period and though it is impossible to speak of him as anything other than a modern poet,” writes James M. Cox, “it is difficult to place him in the main tradition of modern poetry.” In a sense, Frost stands at the crossroads of 19th-century American poetry and modernism, for in his verse may be found the culmination of many 19th-century tendencies and traditions as well as parallels to the works of his 20th-century contemporaries. Taking his symbols from the public domain, Frost developed, as many critics note, an original, modern idiom and a sense of directness and economy that reflect the imagism of Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell. On the other hand, as Leonard Unger and William Van O’Connor point out in Poems for Study, “Frost’s poetry, unlike that of such contemporaries as Eliot, Stevens, and the later Yeats, shows no marked departure from the poetic practices of the nineteenth century.” Although he avoids traditional verse forms and only uses rhyme erratically, Frost is not an innovator and his technique is never experimental. Frost’s theory of poetic composition ties him to both centuries. Like the 19th-century Romantic poets, he maintained that a poem is “never a put-up job. ... It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a loneliness. It is never a thought to begin with. It is at its best when it is a tantalizing vagueness.” Yet, “working out his own version of the ‘impersonal’ view of art,” as Hyatt H. Waggoner observed, Frost also upheld T.S. Eliot ’s idea that the man who suffers and the artist who creates are totally separate. In a 1932 letter to Sydney Cox, Frost explained his conception of poetry: “The objective idea is all I ever cared about. Most of my ideas occur in verse. ... To be too subjective with what an artist has managed to make objective is to come on him presumptuously and render ungraceful what he in pain of his life had faith he had made graceful.” To accomplish such objectivity and grace, Frost took up 19th-century tools and made them new. Lawrance Thompson has explained that, according to Frost, “the self-imposed restrictions of meter in form and of coherence in content” work to a poet’s advantage; they liberate him from the experimentalist’s burden—the perpetual search for new forms and alternative structures. Thus Frost, as he himself put it in “The Constant Symbol,” wrote his verse regular; he never completely abandoned conventional metrical forms for free verse, as so many of his contemporaries were doing. At the same time, his adherence to meter, line length, and rhyme scheme was not an arbitrary choice. He maintained that “the freshness of a poem belongs absolutely to its not having been thought out and then set to verse as the verse in turn might be set to music.” He believed, rather, that the poem’s particular mood dictated or determined the poet’s “first commitment to metre and length of line.” Critics frequently point out that Frost complicated his problem and enriched his style by setting traditional meters against the natural rhythms of speech. Drawing his language primarily from the vernacular, he avoided artificial poetic diction by employing the accent of a soft-spoken New Englander. In The Function of Criticism, Yvor Winters faulted Frost for his “endeavor to make his style approximate as closely as possible the style of conversation.” But what Frost achieved in his poetry was much more complex than a mere imitation of the New England farmer idiom. He wanted to restore to literature the “sentence sounds that underlie the words,” the “vocal gesture” that enhances meaning. That is, he felt the poet’s ear must be sensitive to the voice in order to capture with the written word the significance of sound in the spoken word. “ The Death of the Hired Man ,” for instance, consists almost entirely of dialogue between Mary and Warren, her farmer-husband, but critics have observed that in this poem Frost takes the prosaic patterns of their speech and makes them lyrical. To Ezra Pound “The Death of the Hired Man” represented Frost at his best—when he “dared to write ... in the natural speech of New England; in natural spoken speech, which is very different from the ‘natural’ speech of the newspapers, and of many professors.” Frost’s use of New England dialect is only one aspect of his often discussed regionalism. Within New England, his particular focus was on New Hampshire, which he called “one of the two best states in the Union,” the other being Vermont. In an essay entitled “Robert Frost and New England: A Revaluation,” W.G. O’Donnell noted how from the start, in A Boy’s Will, “Frost had already decided to give his writing a local habitation and a New England name, to root his art in the soil that he had worked with his own hands.” Reviewing North of Boston in the New Republic, Amy Lowell wrote, “Not only is his work New England in subject, it is so in technique. ... Mr. Frost has reproduced both people and scenery with a vividness which is extraordinary.” Many other critics have lauded Frost’s ability to realistically evoke the New England landscape; they point out that one can visualize an orchard in “After Apple-Picking” or imagine spring in a farmyard in “Two Tramps in Mud Time.” In this “ability to portray the local truth in nature,” O’Donnell claims, Frost has no peer. The same ability prompted Pound to declare, “I know more of farm life than I did before I had read his poems. That means I know more of ‘Life.’” Frost’s regionalism, critics remark, is in his realism, not in politics; he creates no picture of regional unity or sense of community. In The Continuity of American Poetry, Roy Harvey Pearce describes Frost’s protagonists as individuals who are constantly forced to confront their individualism as such and to reject the modern world in order to retain their identity. Frost’s use of nature is not only similar but closely tied to this regionalism. He stays as clear of religion and mysticism as he does of politics. What he finds in nature is sensuous pleasure; he is also sensitive to the earth’s fertility and to man’s relationship to the soil. To critic M.L. Rosenthal, Frost’s pastoral quality, his “lyrical and realistic repossession of the rural and ‘natural,’” is the staple of his reputation. Yet, just as Frost is aware of the distances between one man and another, so he is also always aware of the distinction, the ultimate separateness, of nature and man. Marion Montgomery has explained, “His attitude toward nature is one of armed and amicable truce and mutual respect interspersed with crossings of the boundaries” between individual man and natural forces. Below the surface of Frost’s poems are dreadful implications, what Rosenthal calls his “shocked sense of the helpless cruelty of things.” This natural cruelty is at work in “Design” and in “Once by the Pacific.” The ominous tone of these two poems prompted Rosenthal’s further comment: “At his most powerful Frost is as staggered by ‘the horror’ as Eliot and approaches the hysterical edge of sensibility in a comparable way. ... His is still the modern mind in search of its own meaning.” The austere and tragic view of life that emerges in so many of Frost’s poems is modulated by his metaphysical use of detail. As Frost portrays him, man might be alone in an ultimately indifferent universe, but he may nevertheless look to the natural world for metaphors of his own condition. Thus, in his search for meaning in the modern world, Frost focuses on those moments when the seen and the unseen, the tangible and the spiritual intersect. John T. Napier calls this Frost’s ability “to find the ordinary a matrix for the extraordinary.” In this respect, he is often compared with Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson , in whose poetry, too, a simple fact, object, person, or event will be transfigured and take on greater mystery or significance. The poem “ Birches” is an example: it contains the image of slender trees bent to the ground temporarily by a boy’s swinging on them or permanently by an ice-storm. But as the poem unfolds, it becomes clear that the speaker is concerned not only with child’s play and natural phenomena, but also with the point at which physical and spiritual reality merge. Such symbolic import of mundane facts informs many of Frost’s poems, and in “Education by Poetry” he explained: “Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, ‘grace’ metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. ... Unless you are at home in the metaphor, unless you have had your proper poetical education in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.”

North America
U.S., New England

Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.

Frequently honored during his lifetime, Frost is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America’s rare “public literary figures, almost an artistic institution”. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont.

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Analysis of "The Road not Taken"

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A Summary and Analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Fire and Ice’ is one of the best-known and most widely anthologised poems by the American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963). The poem has a symbolic, even allegorical quality to it, which makes more sense when it is analysed in its literary and historical context. Frost wrote ‘Fire and Ice’ in 1920, and it was published in Harper’s Magazine in December of that year.

You can read ‘Fire and Ice’ here before proceeding to our analysis of the poem below.

The elements of fire and ice mentioned in the poem, and foregrounded in its title, are two of the four Aristotelian or classical elements, along with earth and air (although ‘ice’ is usually just described as water, Frost – whose very surname here summons the icy conditions of one half of the poem – is purposely summoning these classical elements).

In summary, ‘Fire and Ice’ is a nine-line poem in which Frost tells us that he has heard some people say that the world will end in fire, while others reckon it will end in ice. In other words, the world will either burn up or freeze up. Frost’s speaker goes on to assert that his own view is that fire is more likely, especially in light of his experiences of desire (which is often linked with fire and heat, e.g. we talk of ‘burning with desire’ for someone).

However, ice comes a close second for him: he’s also experienced enough of the destructive power of cold, icy hatred to see how that might consume the world, too, and be sufficient to destroy it.

We said that fire and ice are perhaps more allegorical than symbolic in Frost’s poem, because rather than leaving these deeply symbolic forces of fire and ice open to speculation and different interpretations, he goes on to link them very specifically to two particular emotions: desire for fire, and hate for ice.

In other words, will humans destroy the world through hating each other so much that we all kill each other? Or will passionate desire actually destroy everything?

In other words, what begins in rather elemental, open-ended terms (perhaps even inviting us to think of global warming, something unknown to Frost, when we read of the world ending in fire) comes to have a distinctly human aspect, grounded in human emotions and behaviour.

What makes ‘Fire and Ice’ such a haunting and even troubling poem is its acknowledgment that desire and passion can be more deadly and destructive than mere hate: hate (‘ice’) may well consume us all through war (we need only look at how religious and political differences can make whole groups of people hate their neighbours), but desire (‘fire’) may prove even more powerful because it can provide the zeal, the irrational belief in something, that will fuel even more destructive behaviour.

Frost wrote ‘Fire and Ice’ in 1920. This is just two years after the end of the First World War, and a time when revolution, apocalypse, and social and political chaos were on many people’s minds. And especially on poets’ minds.

A year earlier, W. B. Yeats had written ‘The Second Coming’, with its famous declaration, ‘ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold ’, and its assertion that a ‘second coming’ must be ‘at hand’, with some sphinx-like creature slowly making its way towards Bethlehem to be born as a second Christ.

Five years after Frost wrote ‘Fire and Ice’, T. S. Eliot would offer his own version of apocalypse in ‘The Hollow Men’ (1925): ‘ This is the way the world ends ’, he says, famously, ‘Not with a bang but a whimper.’ ‘Fire and Ice’ should be seen in the broader literary context of these ‘apocalyptic’ poems.

‘Fire and Ice’ was supposedly the inspiration for the title of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire , and lends a curiously apocalyptic meaning to Game of Thrones . Will the world end in fire or ice?

This idea of one world coming to an end and another, potentially, being born, is obviously also an important context for Robert Frost’s poem: the idea of an old world order giving way to a new was ‘in the air’ when he wrote the poem.

About Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1874-1963) is regarded as one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century. And yet he didn’t belong to any particular movement: unlike his contemporaries William Carlos Williams or Wallace Stevens he was not a modernist, preferring more traditional modes and utilising a more direct and less obscure poetic language.

Many of his poems are about the natural world, with woods and trees featuring prominently in some of his most famous and widely anthologised poems (‘The Road Not Taken’, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, ‘Birches’, ‘Tree at My Window’). Elsewhere, he was fond of very short and pithy poetic statements: see ‘Fire and Ice’ and ‘But Outer Space’, for example.

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2 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’”

It is interesting that Eliot wrote his apocalyptic poem five years after with his own spin. Did Frost influence his version?

That’s a good question. It’s difficult to say what Eliot thought of Frost, and how familiar he was with his work, although it is certainly curious that, in the midst of the next war, in ‘Little Gidding’ (1942), Eliot gives us the line ‘This is the death of water and fire.’

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Frost, robert.

Stanley Burnshaw
https://doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1600598
Published in print: 1999
Published online: February 2000

Robert Frost.

Frost, Robert ( 26 March 1874–29 January 1963 ), poet , was born Robert Lee Frost in San Francisco to Isabelle Moodie, of Scottish birth, and William Prescott Frost, Jr., a descendant of a Devonshire Frost who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634. The father was a former teacher turned newspaper man, a hard drinker, a gambler, and a harsh disciplinarian, who fought to succeed in politics for as long as his health allowed. In the wake of his death (as a consumptive) in his thirty-sixth year, his impoverished widow, with the help of funds from her father-in-law, moved east. She resumed her teaching career in the fall of 1885 in Salem, New Hampshire, where Robert and his younger sister were enrolled in the fifth-grade class. Soon he was playing baseball, trapping animals, climbing birches. And his mother, who had filled his early years with Shakespeare, Bible stories, and myths, was reading aloud from Tom Brown’s School Days , Burns, Ralph Waldo Emerson , Wordsworth, and Percy’s Reliques . Before long he was memorizing poetry and reading books on his own.

Frost’s high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts, marked a further change. Greek and Latin delighted him; at the end of the first year he was head of his class. An older student, Carl Burell, introduced him to botany and astronomy. More important, Frost became a promising writer: his poem “La Noche Triste,” inspired by William H. Prescott ’s History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843), appeared in the April 1890 issue of the high school Bulletin , of which he was soon made editor. He joined the debating society, played on the football team, and again was head of his class. At the beginning of his senior year he fell in love with Elinor White, who had also published poetry in the Bulletin . On commencement day (1892) they shared valedictory honors and, before summer ended, pledged themselves to each other in a secret ritual.

In the fall they went their separate ways: Elinor to St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, Frost to Dartmouth on a scholarship and with his grandfather’s aid. Though he relished his courses in Latin and Greek and his own wide reading of English verse, in particular Francis Turner Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language , the campus life dismayed him. Isolated and restless, he quit at the end of December, being needed, he said, to take over his mother’s unruly eighth-grade class. He was nursing the hope that Elinor might give up school to marry him, but when she returned in April his attempts to persuade her failed.

After working for months as a trimmer of lamps in a woolen mill in Lawrence, Frost turned to teaching in grade school, while also writing poetry. At the end of the term, startling news greeted him: the New York Independent had accepted “My Butterfly: An Elegy,” with a stipend of $15. His first professionally published poem would appear in November—he could earn his living as a writer! Once again he implored Elinor to marry him; once again she refused. Convinced there was now another suitor, he engaged a printer to make two leather-bound, gold-stamped copies of Twilight , each containing five of his poems. He took the train to Canton, knocked at her door, and handed her his gift. The inimically cool reception hurled him into despair. Pained and distraught, he destroyed his copy and went home. Still distraught, on 6 November he set out for the Dismal Swamp in Virginia—to throw his life away? punish Elinor? make her relent? On 30 November 1894, frightened and worn, he was back in Lawrence. Before long he became a reporter, then returned to teaching. Elinor, having finished college, also taught in his mother’s private school. Then at long last, on 19 December 1895, they were married by a Swedenborgian pastor. Nine months later, Elliot, a son, was born.

They both kept working as teachers, and Frost kept publishing poems. In the fall of 1897, thanks to his grandfather’s loan, Frost, at age twenty-three, entered Harvard in the hope of becoming a high school teacher of Latin and Greek. Certain courses proved meaningful, most of all in the classics and geology, but also in philosophy with Hugo Münsterberg , who assigned Psychology: Briefer Course by William James , Frost’s “greatest inspiration,” then absent on leave. In March 1899, however, severe chest and stomach pains combined with worries about his ailing mother and pregnant wife forced him to leave Harvard.

Medical warnings—the threat of tuberculosis—drove Frost from the indoor life of teaching. In May 1900, with his grandfather’s help, he rented a poultry farm in Methuen. Two months later, Elliot, the Frosts’ three-year-old, became gravely ill with cholera infantum ; on 8 July he died. Frost flailed himself for not having summoned a doctor in time, believing that God was punishing him by taking his child away. Elinor, silent for days, at last let fly at him for his “self-centered senselessness” in believing that any such thing as a god’s benevolent concern for human affairs could exist; life was hateful and the world evil, but with a fourteen-month-old daughter, Lesley, to care for, they would have to go on. And when their landlord ordered them to leave by fall, Elinor took matters in hand. She persuaded Grandfather Frost to buy for their use the thirty-acre farm that her mother had found in Derry, New Hampshire, and to arrange, in addition, for Carl Burell, Frost’s high school friend, to move in to help with the chores.

The “Derry Years” (1900–1911) were especially creative ones, bringing forth—complete or in draft—nearly all of A Boy’s Will (1913), much, if not most, of North of Boston (1914), many poems of Mountain Interval (1916), as well as some that appeared in each of his later books. Yet at times in the first two years he was deeply depressed: in November 1900 his mother died; in July 1901, his other firm supporter, Grandfather Frost. But the latter’s will bequeathed to his grandson an immediate annuity of $500 and after ten years an annuity of $800 and the deed to the Derry property.

Frost continued to write at night: poems and articles for poultry journals. He enjoyed working the farm by day and learning about the countryside and the lives of its people. By 1906, though fairly well off compared to his neighbors, yet with four children under seven, he was pressed for money. With the aid of a pastor-friend and a school trustee who admired his poems, he obtained a position at the nearby Pinkerton Academy, which he held with outstanding success. A pedagogic original, he introduced a conversational classroom style. He directed students in plays he adapted from Marlowe, Milton, Sheridan, and Yeats. He revised the English curriculum. And besides teaching seven classes a day, he helped with athletics, the student paper, and the debating team. At the end of five years, utterly exhausted, he resigned.

In the fall of 1911 he was teaching again, part time in the Plymouth, New Hampshire, Normal School. But in December he announced to his editor-friend at the Independent , Susan Ward, that “the long deferred forward movement you have been living in wait for is to begin next year.” In July 1912 he started making plans for a radical change of scene. When he suggested England to Elinor as “the place to be poor and to write poems, ‘Yes,’ she cried, ‘let’s go over and live under thatch.’ ”

On 2 September 1912 the Frosts arrived in London. They stayed there briefly before moving into “The Bungalow” in Beaconsfield, where they would live for eighteen months. Elinor, charmed by the “dear little cottage” and its long grassy yard, strolled the countryside with the children; Frost traveled at will to London—forty minutes by train—roaming the streets, the bookshops, “everywhere.” Before long he was finishing the manuscript of A Boy’s Will that he had brought to England and adding a few new poems. In October the book was accepted by David Nutt for publication the following March.

Through the next few months Frost was seized by a powerful surge of creativity, producing twelve or more lengthy poems, each strikingly different from the brooding narratives of A Boy’s Will : dialog-narratives in a style of “living” speech new to the language, exploring the inward lives of ordinary people in the New England countryside. By April 1913, most of (if not all) the poems that would constitute North of Boston had been written.

At the January 1913 opening of Monro’s Poetry Bookshop Frost was urged by the poet Frank Flint to call on Ezra Pound (whom he had never heard of), a reviewer for various journals. Frost waited until 13 March, about a week before A Boy’s Will was to appear. At Pound’s insistence, they walked to the publisher’s office for a copy. On their return, Pound started reading at once, then told his guest to “run along home” so he could write his review for Poetry , a new American monthly. In the next few weeks, thanks to Pound and Flint, Frost came to meet some of the best-known writers then living in England, including Yeats, H.D. ( Hilda Doolittle ), Richard Aldington, and Ford Madox Ford.

A Boy’s Will , finally issued on 1 April 1913, elicited favorable but qualified reviews. Chronicling the growth of a youth from self-centered idealism to maturity and acceptance of loss, the thirty-two lyrics offered few hints of the masterful volumes to come, except for those in “Mowing,” “Storm Fear,” and scattered passages. Yeats pronounced the poetry “the best written in America for some time,” leading Elinor to “hope”—in vain—that “he would say so publicly.” Happily, in the fall, on his return from a family vacation in Scotland, Frost was greeted by two extraordinary tributes in the Nation and the Chicago Dial and a superb review in the Academy .

During the next few months, Frost came to know the writers Robert Bridges, Walter de la Mare, W. H. Davies, and Ralph Hodgson; the Georgian poets Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Gibson, Lascelles Abercrombie; and the essayist and poet Edward Thomas, who would become his bosom friend. With Flint and T. E. Hulme he discussed poetics, having spoken in letters to his Pinkerton friends John Bartlett and Sidney Cox of “the sounds of sense with all their irregularity of accent across the regular beat of the metre” and “the sentence sound [that] often says more than the words.” He also wrote that he wanted not “a success with the critical few” but “to get outside to the general reader who buys books by the thousands.”

In April, badly strained for funds, Frost moved his family 100 miles northwest of London to an ancient cottage, not far from Abercrombie’s and Gibson’s, in the rolling Gloucestershire farmland near Dymock. On 15 May North of Boston appeared, to be hailed in June by important reviews, particularly those by Abercrombie (“there will never be,” said Frost, “any other just like it”), Ford Madox Ford (“an achievement much finer than Whitman’s”), Richard Aldington (“it would be very difficult to overpraise it”), and Edward Thomas (“Only at the end of the best pieces, such as ‘The Death of the Hired Man,’ ‘Home Burial,’ ‘The Black Cottage,’ and ‘The Wood-pile,’ do we realize that they are masterpieces of a deep and mysterious tenderness”). By August, Frost’s reputation as a leading poet had been firmly established in England, and Henry Holt of New York had agreed to publish his books in America. By the end of 1914, however, financial need forced him to leave Britain.

When Frost and his family returned to the United States in February, he was hailed as a leading voice of the “new poetry” movement. Holt’s editor introduced him to the staff of the New Republic , which had just published a favorable review of North of Boston , and Tufts College invited him to be its Phi Beta Kappa poet. Before the year’s end, he had met with Edwin Arlington Robinson , William Dean Howells , Louis Untermeyer (who would become his intimate friend), Ellery Sedgwick of the Atlantic Monthly , and other literary figures. In the following year he was made Phi Beta Kappa poet at Harvard and elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Mountain Interval , which appeared in November 1916, offered readers some of his finest poems, such as “Birches,” “Out, Out—,” “The Hill Wife,” and “An Old Man’s Winter Night.”

Frost’s move to Amherst in 1917 launched him on the twofold career he would lead for the rest of his life: teaching whatever “subjects” he pleased at a congenial college (Amherst, 1917–1963, with interruptions; the University of Michigan, 1921–1923, 1925–1926; Harvard, 1939–1943; Dartmouth, 1943–1949) and “barding around,” his term for “saying” poems in a conversational performance. Audiences flocked to listen to the “gentle farmer-poet” whose platform manner concealed the ever-troubled, agitated private man who sought through each of his poems “a momentary stay against confusion.” In the great short lyrics of New Hampshire (1923) and West-Running Brook (1928)—such as “Fire and Ice,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and the title poem of the latter book—a bleak outlook on life persuasively emerges from the combination of dramatic tension and nature imagery freighted with ambiguity. Only the will to create form, the poet in effect says, can stave off the nothingness that confronts us as mortal beings.

In 1930 Frost won a second Pulitzer Prize for Collected Poems —the first had been won by New Hampshire —and in the next few years, other prizes and honors, including the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard. However, when A Further Range appeared in 1936, several influential leftist critics, unaware that Frost had “twice been approached” by the New Masses “to be their proletarian poet,” attacked him for his conservative political views, ignoring the bitter meanings in “Provide, Provide” and such master poems as “Desert Places,” “Design,” and “Neither Out Far nor In Deep.” A Further Range earned him a third Pulitzer Prize in May 1937. Ten months later, on 26 March 1938, Elinor died and his world collapsed. Four years before, in the wake of their daughter Marjorie’s death, they had helped each other bear the grief. Alone now, wracked in misery and guilty over his sometimes insensitive behavior toward Elinor, he hoped to find calm through his children, but Lesley’s ragings only deepened his pain. For some time he continued to teach, then resigned his position, sold his Amherst house, and returned to his farm. In July Theodore Morrison invited him to speak at the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference in August. Frost’s lectures enthralled his listeners, but at times his erratic public behavior drew worried attention. To the great relief of his friends, Kathleen Morrison, the director’s wife, stepped in to offer him help with his affairs. He accepted at once and made her his official secretary-manager.

Weeks before, however, Kathleen had called at his farm to invite him to visit her at a nearby summer house. Before long he proposed marriage, but she insisted on secrecy, on maintaining appearances. “We wanted to marry,” he told Stanley Burnshaw, his editor in the 1960s. “It was all decided. But you know how matters seem at times—others to think of … It was thought best,” he repeated, “It was thought best”—marriage without benefit of clergy, an altered way of life. He continued to bard around and to teach, residing from January through March at “Pencil Pines,” his newly built Miami retreat; at his Cambridge house until late May; then in Ripton, near Breadloaf, for the summer; and in Cambridge again through December.

During the 1940s Frost published four new books: A Witness Tree (1942), inscribed “To K.M./For Her Part in It,” containing some of his finest poems, among them “The Most of It” and “The Silken Tent,” and for which he received his fourth Pulitzer Prize; two deceptively playful blank verse dialogs, A Masque of Reason (1945) and A Masque of Mercy (1947), on the relationship between God and man, to be “taken” in light of his statements on “irony . . . a kind of guardedness” and “style … the way the man takes himself … If it is with outer humor, it must be with inner seriousness”; and fourth, Steeple Bush (1947), his weakest volume, although it included “Directive,” one of Frost’s major poems. None but his intimates knew of the decade’s griefs: his son Carol’s suicide in 1940, his daughter Irma’s placement in a mental hospital in 1947.

In the last fourteen years of his life Frost was the most highly esteemed American poet of the twentieth century, having received forty-four honorary degrees and a host of government tributes, including birthday greetings from the Senate, a congressional medal, an appointment as honorary consultant to the Library of Congress, and an invitation from John F. Kennedy to recite a poem at his presidential inauguration. Thrice, at the State Department’s request, he traveled on good-will missions: to Brazil (1954), to Britain (1957), and to Greece (1961, on his return from Israel, where he had lectured at the Hebrew University).

More important for Frost as an artist and for his readers were the changed perceptions of his works, which began with Randall Jarrell ’s 1947 essay “The Other Frost.” Jarrell saw him as “the subtlest and saddest of poets” whose “extraordinary strange poems express an attitude that, at its most extreme, makes pessimism a hopeful evasion.” Twelve years later Lionel Trilling hailed Frost at his eighty-fifth birthday dinner for his “representation of the terrible actualities of life in a new way,” for though “the manifest America of [his] poems may be pastoral, the actual America is tragic.” And two years earlier, in London at the English-Speaking Union, T. S. Eliot (who in 1922 had dismissed Frost’s verse as “unreadable”) toasted him as “perhaps the most eminent, the most distinguished Anglo-American poet now living,” whose “kind of local feeling in poetry … can go without universality: the relation of Dante to Florence, … of Robert Frost to New England.”

In the Clearing , Frost’s ninth and last collection of poems, appeared on 26 March 1962, the date of his eighty-eighth birthday dinner in Washington, attended by some 200 guests who heard Justices Earl Warren and Felix Frankfurter , Adlai Stevenson , Mark Van Doren , and Robert Penn Warren speak in his honor. Five months later, at the president’s request, Frost made a twelve-day trip to the USSR, where he met with fellow writers and with Premier Nikita Khrushchev. On his return, “bone tired” and exhausted after eighteen sleepless hours, he made some ill-considered public remark, which was taken as a slur on both Khrushchev and President Kennedy. To Frost’s deep dismay, the president did not receive him.

On 2 December at the Ford Forum Hall in Boston Frost made his last address and, though admitting he felt a bit tired, he stayed the evening through. In the morning he felt much too ill to keep his doctor’s appointment. After considerable wrangling, he agreed to enter a hospital “for observation and tests.” He remained in its care until his death in the early hours of 29 January 1963. Tributes poured in from all over the land and from abroad. A small private service on the 31st at Harvard’s Memorial Church for family members and friends was followed by a public one on 17 February at the Amherst College Chapel, where 700 guests listened to Mark Van Doren’s recital of eleven Frost poems he had chosen for the occasion. Eight months later, at the October dedication of the Robert Frost Library at Amherst, President Kennedy paid tribute to the poetry, to “its tide that lifts all spirits,” and to the poet “whose sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation.”

Within a decade, however, the poet’s public image was shattered by the appearance of the second volume of Lawrance Thompson’s authorized biography, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915–1937 (1970), which reviewers took at face value to be an accurate account of a man whom Helen Vendler deemed a “monster of egotism” ( New York Times Book Review , 9 Aug. 1970). Although Frost later came to have grave misgivings about his choice, he had designated Thompson his official biographer in 1939. For whatever reason, the poet felt unable to renounce that decision despite his awareness of Thompson’s frequently unsympathetic, even hostile constructions of his attitudes and conduct. Although reviewers perceived in Thompson, as Vendler put it, “an affectation of fairness,” they tended to subscribe, nevertheless, to the “monster-myth” that poisoned Frost’s reputation. Evidence that he was not a wrecker of others’ lives was soon at hand in the form of The Family Letters of Robert and Elinor Frost , edited by Arnold Grade (1972). More than a decade would pass before the tide was turned: first by W. H. Pritchard’s Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered (1984) and then by Stanley Burnshaw’s Robert Frost Himself (1986), which enabled Publishers’ Weekly to state that “the unfortunately influential ‘monster-myth’ stands here convincingly corrected.”

Bibliography

Significant collections of Frost materials are in the Jones Library in Amherst, Mass., Amherst College Library, Dartmouth College Library, University of Virginia Library, and University of Texas Library, Austin. In addition to the volumes by Frost cited in the text above, editions of his writings include Collected Poems, Prose & Plays , ed. Richard Poirier and Mark S. Richardson (1995), and “The Collected Prose of Robert Frost,” ed. M. S. Richardson (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers Univ., 1993). Additional correspondence appears in Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer , ed. Louis Untermeyer (1963), and Selected Letters of Robert Frost , ed. Lawrance Thompson, 1964. Frost’s spoken words are transcribed in Robert Frost Speaks , ed. Daniel Smythe (1964); Robert Frost, Life and Talks-Walking , ed. Louis Mertins (1965); Interviews with Robert Frost , ed. E. C. Lathem (1966); Robert Frost: A Living Voice , ed. Reginald Cook (1974); and Newdick’s Season of Frost , ed. William Sutton (1976).

Biographical materials include L. Thompson’s typescript “Notes on Robert Frost” (1962; Alderman Library, Univ. of Virginia); Sidney Cox, A Swinger of Birches , with an introduction by Robert Frost (1957); Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, Robert Frost: The Trial by Existence (1960); Margaret Bartlett Anderson, Robert Frost and John Bartlett: The Record of a Friendship (1963); F. D. Reeve, Robert Frost in Russia (1964); Wade Van Dore, Robert Frost and Wade Van Dore , rev. and ed. Thomas Wetmore (1987); John E. Walsh, Into My Own: The English Years of Robert Frost (1988); and Lesley Lee Francis (his granddaughter), The Frost Family’s Adventure in Poetry (1994). In addition to The Years of Triumph volume discussed above, L. Thompson’s official biography comprises Robert Frost: The Early Years, 1874–1915 (1966) and Robert Frost: The Later Years, 1938–1963 , with R. H. Winnick (1976). Assessments and criticism of note include Richard Thornton, ed., Recognition of Robert Frost (1937); Reuben Brower, The Poetry of Robert Frost (1963); Jac Tharpe, ed., Frost: Centennial Essays (3 vols., 1974–1978); R. Poirier, Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing (1977); and M. S. Richardson, The Ordeal of Robert Frost: The Poet and His Poetics (1997).

Online Resources

Robert Frost http://www.poets.org/lit/poet/rfrosfst.htm From the Academy of American Poets.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882), lecturer and author
Prescott, William Hickling (1796-1859), historian
Münsterberg, Hugo (1863-1916), psychologist
James, William (1842-1910), philosopher and psychologist
Pound, Ezra (1885-1972), poet and critic
Doolittle, Hilda (1886-1961), poet and novelist
Holt, Henry (1840-1926), book publisher
Robinson, Edwin Arlington (1869-1935), poet
Howells, William Dean (1837-1920), author
Untermeyer, Louis (1885-1977), poet and anthologist
Sedgwick, Ellery (27 February 1872–21 April 1960), magazine editor
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (29 May 1917–22 November 1963), thirty-fifth president of the United States
Jarrell, Randall (1914-1965), poet and critic
Trilling, Lionel (1905-1975), literary critic and author
Eliot, T. S. (26 September 1888–04 January 1965), poet, critic, and editor
Warren, Earl (1891-1974), chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, governor of California, and attorney general of California
Frankfurter, Felix (15 November 1882–22 February 1965), associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
Stevenson, Adlai Ewing, II (1900-1965), governor, diplomat, and two-time candidate for president
Van Doren, Mark (13 June 1894–10 December 1972), writer and professor of English
Warren, Robert Penn (24 April 1905–15 September 1989), author and educator

External resources

Library of Congress Poets Laureate

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Symbolism in Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”

How it works

1 Introduction
2 Boundaries in the Real and Mental Worlds
3 Neighborly Relations and Communication
4 Questioning the Need for Divisions
5 Conclusion

Introduction

Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” isn’t just a story about two neighbors fixing a stone wall that separates their land; it’s full of deeper meanings about division, talking to each other, and human nature. Written in 1914, a time when a lot was changing socially and politically, the poem shows Frost’s sharp look at how people behave and what’s normal in society. The wall, which is supposed to keep the properties apart, turns into a powerful symbol with many meanings.

This essay will look into what the wall in “Mending Wall” symbolizes, especially about boundaries, neighborly relations, and how humans often create divisions.

Boundaries in the Real and Mental Worlds

The wall in “Mending Wall” is a big symbol, showing the boundaries people make both in the real world and in their minds. On the surface, the wall splits the two neighbors’ lands, showing how humans like to create clear spaces and territories. But this wall also stands for the emotional and mental walls people build to protect themselves or to stay away from others. The yearly task of fixing the wall, where the neighbors come together to work, interestingly shows the divisions they want to keep. Fixing the wall becomes a symbol of the ongoing effort to keep boundaries, hinting that these separations aren’t natural or permanent but need constant work. This yearly fixing highlights the push and pull between staying apart and coming together, showing how complicated human relationships are.

Neighborly Relations and Communication

The wall in Frost’s poem also shows what neighborly relations and communication (or the lack of it) between people are like. The narrator wonders if the wall is really needed, asking, “Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it / Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.” This doubt shows a deeper question about why people build barriers between themselves. But the neighbor’s firm belief that “Good fences make good neighbors” shows a stick-to-tradition attitude and a hesitance to question old norms. This difference between the narrator’s questioning and the neighbor’s rigid mindset symbolizes the larger human struggle between being open and being conservative. So, the wall becomes a symbol of the obstacles to communication and understanding between people, as well as the societal norms that keep these divisions going.

Questioning the Need for Divisions

The wall also symbolizes the human habit of creating and keeping divisions without really thinking if they’re needed. The poem subtly criticizes the blind acceptance of boundaries through the narrator’s thoughts and the natural images hinting that these walls go against nature. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” the poem starts, suggesting a natural force that fights these man-made separations. The gaps in the wall, caused by things like the “frozen-ground-swell” or hunters, symbolize how these human-made barriers will eventually break down. Even with nature pushing against these divisions, the neighbors’ yearly effort to fix the wall shows the human need to rebuild and keep boundaries, even if they’re not needed or helpful. This part of the wall’s meaning shows how persistent human divisions are and how hard it is to get past deep-rooted societal norms.

In conclusion, Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” uses the wall symbol to dive into themes of boundaries, communication, and human nature. The wall stands for more than just physical separations; it also represents the emotional and mental barriers people build. The yearly fixing of the wall shows the work needed to keep these divisions, while also pointing out the tension between staying apart and connecting. The poem also criticizes the unquestioning acceptance of boundaries, suggesting that these divisions are often unnatural and unnecessary. Through its rich symbolism, “Mending Wall” makes readers think about human relationships and societal norms, ultimately questioning if such barriers are helpful or harmful. Frost’s detailed portrayal of the wall shows the complexity of human interactions and the ongoing struggle between separation and connection.

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On Grief and Reason

I should tell you that what follows is a spinoff of a seminar given four years ago at the Collège International de Philosophie, in Paris. Hence a certain breeziness to the pace; hence, too, the paucity of biographical material—irrelevant, in my view, to the analysis of a work of art in general, and particularly where a foreign audience is concerned. In any case, the pronoun “you” in these pages stands for those ignorant of or poorly acquainted with the lyrical and narrative strengths of the poetry of Robert Frost. But, first, some basics.

Robert Frost was born in 1874 and died in 1963, at the age of eighty-eight. One marriage, six children; fairly strapped when young; farming, and, later, teaching jobs in various schools. Not much travelling until late in his life; he mostly resided on the East Coast, in New England. If biography accounts for poetry, this one should have resulted in none. Yet he published nine books of poems; the second one, “North of Boston,” which came out when he was forty, made him famous. That was in 1914.

After that, his sailing was a bit smoother. But literary fame is not exactly popularity. As it happens, it took the Second World War to bring Frost’s work to the general public’s notice. In 1943, the Council on Books in Wartime distributed fifty thousand copies of Frost’s “Come In” to United States troops stationed overseas, as a morale-builder. By 1955, his “Selected Poems” was in its fourth edition, and one could speak of his poetry’s having acquired national standing.

It did. In the course of nearly five decades following the publication of “North of Boston,” Frost reaped every possible reward and honor an American poet can get; shortly before Frost’s death, John Kennedy invited him to read a poem at the Inauguration ceremony. Along with recognition naturally came a great deal of envy and resentment, a substantial contribution to which emerged from the pen of Frost’s own biographer. And yet both the adulation and resentment had one thing in common: a nearly total misconception of what Frost was all about.

He is generally regarded as the poet of the countryside, of rural settings—as a folksy, crusty, wisecracking old gentleman farmer, generally of positive disposition. In short, as American as apple pie. To be fair, he greatly enhanced this notion by projecting precisely this image of himself in numerous public appearances and interviews throughout his career. I suppose it wasn’t that difficult for him to do, for he had those qualities in him as well. He was indeed a quintessential American poet; it is up to us, however, to find out what that quintessence is made of, and what the term “American” means as applied to poetry and, perhaps, in general.

In 1959, at a banquet thrown in New York on the occasion of Robert Frost’s eighty-fifth birthday, the most prominent literary critic at that time, Lionel Trilling, rose and declared that Robert Frost was “a terrifying poet.” That, of course, caused a certain stir, but the epithet was well chosen.

Now, I want you to make the distinction here between terrifying and tragic. Tragedy, as you know, is always a fait accompli, whereas terror always has to do with anticipation, with man’s recognition of his own negative potential—with his sense of what he is capable of. And it is the latter that was Frost’s forte, not the former. In other words, his posture is radically different from the Continental tradition of the poet as tragic hero. And that difference alone makes him—for want of a better term—American.

On the surface, he looks very positively predisposed toward his surroundings—particularly toward nature. His fluency, his “being versed in country things” alone can produce this impression. However, there is a difference between the way a European perceives nature and the way an American does. Addressing this difference, W. H. Auden, in his short essay on Frost, suggests something to the effect that when a European conceives of confronting nature, he walks out of his cottage or a little inn, filled with either friends or family, and goes for an evening stroll. If he encounters a tree, it’s a tree made familiar by history, to which it’s been a witness. This or that king sat underneath it, laying down this or that law—something of that sort. A tree stands there rustling, as it were, with allusions. Pleased and somewhat pensive, our man, refreshed but unchanged by that encounter, returns to his inn or cottage, finds his friends or family absolutely intact, and proceeds to have a good, merry time. Whereas when an American walks out of his house and encounters a tree it is a meeting of equals. Man and tree face each other in their respective primal power, free of references: neither has a past, and as to whose future is greater, it is a toss-up. Basically, it’s epidermis meeting bark. Our man returns to his cabin in a state of bewilderment, to say the least, if not in actual shock or terror.

Now, this is obviously a romantic caricature, but it accentuates the features, and that’s what I am after here. In any case, the second point could be safely billed as the gist of Robert Frost’s nature poetry. Nature for this poet is neither friend nor foe, nor is it the backdrop for human drama; it is this poet’s terrifying self-portrait. And now I am going to start with one of his poems, which appears in the 1942 volume “A Witness Tree.” I am about to put forth my views and opinions about his lines without any concern for academic objectivity, and some of these views will be pretty dark. All I can say in my defense is (a) that I do like this poet enormously and I am going to try to sell him to you as he is, and (b) that some of that darkness is not entirely mine: it is his lines’ sediment that has darkened my mind; in other words, I got it from him.

Let’s look at “Come In.” A short poem in short metre—actually, a combination of trimeter with dimeter, anapest with iamb. The stuff of ballads, which by and large are all about gore and comeuppance. So, up to a certain point, is this poem. The metre hints as much. What are we dealing with here? A walk in the woods? A stroll through nature? Something that poets usually do? (And if yes, by the way, then why?) “Come In” is one of many poems written by Frost about such strolls. Think of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Acquainted with the Night,” “Desert Places,” “Away!,” and so forth. Or else think of Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush,” with which this poem has a distinct affinity. Hardy was also very fond of lonely strolls, except most of his had a tendency to wind up in a graveyard—since England was settled long ago, and more thickly, I guess.

To begin with, we again have a thrush. And a bird, as you know, is very often a bard, since, technically speaking, both sing. So as we proceed we should bear in mind that our poet may be delegating certain aspects of his psyche to the bird. Actually, I firmly believe that these two birds are related. The difference is only that it takes Hardy sixteen lines to introduce his bird in a poem, whereas Frost gets down to business in the second line. On the whole, this is indicative of the difference between the Americans and the British—I mean in poetry. Because of a greater cultural heritage, a greater set of references, it usually takes much longer for a Briton to set a poem in motion. The sense of echo is stronger in his ear, and thus he flexes his muscle and demonstrates his facility before he gets down to his subject. Normally, that sort of routine results in a poem’s being as big on exposition as on the actual message: in long-windedness, if you will—though, depending on who is doing the job, this is not necessarily a shortcoming.

Now, let’s do it line by line. “As I came to the edge of the woods” is a fairly simple, informative job, stating the subject and setting the metre. An innocent line, on the surface, wouldn’t you say? Well, it is, save for “the woods.” “The woods” makes one suspicious, and, with that, “the edge” does, too. Poetry is a dame with a huge pedigree, and every word comes practically barnacled with allusions and associations. Since the fourteenth century, the woods have given off a very strong smell of* selva oscura*, and you may recall what that selva led the author of the Divine Comedy into. In any case, when a twentieth-century poet starts a poem with finding himself at the edge of the woods there is a reasonable element of danger—or, at least, a faint suggestion of it. The edge, in its very self, is sufficiently sharp.

Maybe not; maybe our suspicions are unfounded, maybe we are just paranoid and are reading too much into this line. Let’s go to the next line, and we shall see:

As I came to the edge of the woods, Thrush music—hark!

Looks like we’ve goofed. What could be more innocuous than this antiquated, Victorian-sounding, fairy-tale-like “hark”? A bird is singing—listen! “Hark” truly belongs in a Hardy poem, or in a ballad; better yet, in a jingle. It suggests a level of diction at which nothing untoward could be conveyed. The poem promises to proceed in a comforting, melodious way. That’s what you’re thinking, anyway, after hearing “hark”: that you’re going to have some sort of description of the music made by the thrush—that you are getting into familiar territory.

But that was a setup, as the following two lines show. It was but an exposition, crammed by Frost into two lines. Abruptly, in a fairly indecorous, matter-of-fact, non-melodious, and non-Victorian way, the diction and the register shift:

Now if it was dusk outside, Inside it was dark.

It’s “now” that does this job of leaving very little room for any fancy. What’s more, you realize that the “hark” rhymes with “dark.” And that that “dark” is the condition of “inside,” which could allude not only to the woods, since the comma sets that “inside” into sharp opposition to the third line’s “outside,” and since the opposition is given you in the fourth line, which makes it a more drastic statement. Not to mention that this opposition is but the matter of substitution of just two letters: of putting “ar” instead of “us” between “d” and “k.” The vowel sound remains essentially the same. What we’ve got here is the difference in just one consonant.

There is a slight choking air in the fourth line. That has to do with its distribution of stresses, different from the first dimeter. The stanza contracts, as it were, toward its end, and the caesura after “inside” only underscores that “inside” ’s isolation. Now, while I am offering you this deliberately slanted reading of this poem, I’d like to urge you to pay very close attention to its every letter, every caesura, if only because it deals with a bird, and a bird’s trills are a matter of pauses and, if you will, characters. Being predominantly monosyllabic, English is highly suitable for this parroting job, and the shorter the metre, the greater the pressure upon every letter, every caesura, every comma. At any rate, that “dark” literally renders the “woods” as la selva oscura .

With the memory of what that dark wood was entry to, let’s approach the next stanza:

Too dark in the woods for a bird By sleight of wing To better its perch for the night, Though it still could sing.

What do you think is happening here? A British or a Continental—or, for that matter, a properly American—innocent would still reply that it is about a bird singing in the evening, and that it is a nice tune. Interestingly, he would be right, and it is on this sort of rightness that Frost’s reputation rests. In fact, though, this stanza, in particular, is extremely dark. One could argue that the poem considers something rather unpleasant, quite possibly a suicide. Or, if not suicide—well, death. And, if not necessarily death, then—at least, in this stanza—the notion of the afterlife.

In “Too dark in the woods for a bird,” a bird, alias bard, scrutinizes “the woods” and finds them too dark. “Too” here echoes—no! harks back to—Dante’s opening lines in the Divine Comedy: our bird/bard’s assessment of that selva differs from the great Italian’s. To put it plainly, the afterlife is darker for Frost than it is for Dante. The question is why, and the answer is either because he disbelieves in the whole thing or because his notion of himself makes him, in his mind, slated for damnation. Nothing in his power can improve his eventual standing, and I’d venture that “sleight of wing” could be regarded as a reference to last rites. Above all, this poem is about being old and pondering what is next. “To better its perch for the night” has to do with the possibility of being assigned elsewhere, not just to Hell—the night here being that of eternity. The only thing the bird/bard has to show for himself is that it/he “still could sing.”

“The woods” are “too dark” for a bird because a bird is too far gone at being a bird. No motion of its soul, alias “sleight of wing,” can improve its eventual fate in these “woods.” Whose woods these are I think we know: one of their branches is where a bird is to end up anyway, and a “perch” gives a sense of these woods’ being well structured: it is an enclosure—a sort of chicken coop, if you will. Thus, our bird is doomed; no last-minute conversion (“sleight” is a conjuring term) is feasible, if only because a bard is too old for any quick motion of the hand. Yet, old though he is, he still can sing.

And in the third stanza you have that bird singing: you have the song itself, the last one. It is a tremendously expansive gesture. Look at how every word here postpones the next one. “The last”—caesura—“of the light”—caesura—“of the sun”—line break, which is a big caesura—“That had died”—caesura—“in the west.” Our bird/bard traces the last of the light to its vanished source. You almost hear in this line the good old “Shenandoah,” the song of going West. Delay and postponement are palpable here. “The last” is not finite, and “of the light” is not finite, and “of the sun” is not. What’s more, “that had died” itself is not finite, though it should have been. Even “in the west” isn’t. What we’ve got here is the song of lingering: of light, of life. You almost see the finger pointing out the source and then, in the broad circular motion of the last two lines, returning to the speaker in “Still lived”—caesura—“for one song more”—line break—“In a thrush’s breast.” Between “The last” and “breast” our poet covers an extraordinary distance: the width of the continent, if you will. After all, he describes the light, which is still upon him, the opposite of the darkness of the woods. The breast is, after all, the source of any song, and you almost see here not so much a thrush as a robin; anyhow, a bird singing at sunset: it lingers on the bird’s breast.

And here, in the opening lines of the fourth stanza, is where the bird and the bard part ways. “Far in the pillared dark / Thrush music went.” The key word here is “pillared,” of course: it suggests a cathedral interior—a church, in any case. In other words, our thrush flies into the woods, and you hear his music from within, “almost like a call to come in / To the dark and lament.” If you want, you may replace “lament” with “repent”: the effect will be practically the same. What’s being described here is one of the choices before our old bard this evening: the choice he does not make. The thrush has chosen that “sleight of wing” after all. It is bettering its perch for the night; it accepts its fate, for lament is acceptance. You could plunge yourself here into a maze of ecclesiastical distinctions—Frost’s essential Protestantism, etc. I’d advise against it, since a stoic posture befits believers and agnostics alike; in this line of work, it is practically inescapable. On the whole, references (religious ones especially) are not to be shrunk to inferences.

“But no, I was out for stars” is Frost’s usual deceptive maneuver, projecting his positive sensibility: lines like that are what earned him his reputation. If he was indeed “out for stars,” why didn’t he mention that before? Why did he write the whole poem about something else? But this line is here not solely to deceive you. It is here to deceive—or, rather, to quell—himself. This whole stanza is. Unless we read this line as the poet’s general statement about his presence in this world—in the romantic key, that is, as a line about his general metaphysical appetite, not to be quenched by this little one-night agony.

I would not come in. I meant not even if asked, And I hadn’t been.

There is too much jocular vehemence in these lines for us to take them at face value, although we should not omit this option, either. The man is shielding himself from his own insights, and he gets grammatically as well as syllabically assertive and less idiomatic—especially in the second line, “I would not come in,” which could be easily truncated into “I won’t come in.” “I meant not even if asked” comes off with a menacing resoluteness, which could amount to a statement of his agnosticism were it not for the last line’s all too clever qualifier: “And I hadn’t been.” This is indeed a sleight of hand.

Or else you can treat this stanza and, with it, the whole poem as Frost’s humble footnote or postscript to Dante’s Commedia, which ends with “stars”—as his acknowledgment of possessing either a lesser belief or a lesser gift. The poet here refuses an invitation into darkness; moreover, he questions the very call: “ Almost like a call to come in . . .” One shouldn’t make heavy weather of Frost’s affinity with Dante, but here and there it’s palpable, especially in the poems dealing with dark nights of the soul—for instance, in “Acquainted with the Night.” Unlike a number of his illustrious contemporaries, Frost never wears his learning on his sleeve—mainly because it is in his bloodstream. So “I meant not even if asked” could be read not only as his refusal to make a meal of his dreadful apprehension but also as a reference to his stylistic choice in ruling out a major form. Be that as it may, one thing is clear: without Dante’s Commedia, this poem wouldn’t have existed.

Still, should you choose to read “Come In” as a nature poem, you are perfectly welcome to it. I suggest, though, that you take a longer look at the title. The twenty lines of the poem constitute, as it were, the title’s translation. And in this translation, I am afraid, the expression “come in” means “die.”

While in “Come In” we have Frost at his lyrical best, in “Home Burial” we have him at his narrative best. Actually, “Home Burial” is not a narrative; it is an eclogue. Or, more exactly, it is a pastoral—except that it is a very dark one. Insofar as it tells a story, it is, of course, a narrative; the means of that story’s transportation, though, is dialogue, and it is the means of transportation that defines a genre. Invented by Theocritus in his idylls, refined by Virgil in the poems called Eclogues or Bucolics, the pastoral is essentially an exchange between two or more characters in a rural setting, returning often to that perennial subject, love. Since the English and French word “pastoral” is overburdened with happy connotations, and since Frost is closer to Virgil than to Theocritus, and not only chronologically, let’s follow Virgil and call this poem an eclogue. The rural setting is here, and so are the two characters: a farmer and his wife, who may qualify as a shepherd and a shepherdess, except that it is two thousand years later. So is their subject: love, two thousand years later.

To make a long story short, Frost is a very Virgilian poet. By that, I mean the Virgil of the Bucolics and the Georgics, not the Virgil of the Aeneid. To begin with, the young Frost did a considerable amount of farming—as well as a lot of writing. The posture of gentleman farmer wasn’t all posture. As a matter of fact, until the end of his days he kept buying farms. By the time he died, he had owned, if I am not mistaken, four farms in Vermont and New Hampshire. He knew something about living off the land—not less, in any case, than Virgil, who must have been a disastrous farmer, to judge by the agricultural advice he dispenses in the Georgics.

With few exceptions, American poetry is essentially Virgilian, which is to say contemplative. That is, if you take four Roman poets of the Augustan period, Propertius, Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, as the standard representatives of the four known humors (Propertius’s choleric intensity, Ovid’s sanguine couplings, Virgil’s phlegmatic musings, Horace’s melancholic equipoise), then American poetry—indeed, poetry in English in general—strikes you as being by and large of Virgilian or Horatian denomination. (Consider the bulk of Wallace Stevens’ soliloquies, or the late, American Auden.) Yet Frost’s affinity with Virgil is not so much temperamental as technical. Apart from frequent recourse to disguise (or mask) and the opportunity for distancing oneself that an invented character offers to the poet, Frost and Virgil have in common a tendency to hide the real subject matter of their dialogues under the monotonous, opaque sheen of their respective pentameters and hexameters. A poet of extraordinary probing and anxiety, the Virgil of the Eclogues and the Georgics is commonly taken for a bard of love and country pleasures, just like the author of “North of Boston.”

To this it should be added that Virgil in Frost comes to you obscured by Wordsworth and Browning. “Filtered” is perhaps a better word, and Browning’s dramatic monologue is quite a filter, engulfing the dramatic situation in solid Victorian ambivalence and uncertainty. Frost’s dark pastorals are dramatic also, not only in the sense of the intensity of the characters’ interplay but above all in the sense that they are indeed theatrical. It is a kind of theatre in which the author plays all the roles, including those of stage designer, director, ballet master, etc. It’s he who turns the lights off, and sometimes he is the audience also.

That stands to reason. For Theocritus’s idylls, in their own right, are but a compression of Greek drama. In “Home Burial” we have an arena reduced to a staircase, with its Hitchcockian banister. The opening line tells you as much about the actors’ positions as about their roles: those of the hunter and his prey. Or, as you’ll see later, of Pygmalion and Galatea, except that in this case the sculptor turns his living model into stone. In the final analysis, “Home Burial” is a love poem, and if only on these grounds it qualifies as a pastoral.

But let’s examine this line and a half:

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs Before she saw him.

Frost could have stopped right here. It is already a poem, it is already a drama. Imagine this line and a half sitting on the page all by itself, in minimalist fashion. It’s an extremely loaded scene—or, better yet, a frame. You’ve got an enclosure, the house, with two individuals at cross—no, diverse—purposes. He’s at the bottom of the stairs; she’s at the top. He’s looking up at her; she, for all we know thus far, doesn’t register his presence at all. Also, you’ve got to remember that it’s in black and white. The staircase dividing them suggests a hierarchy of significances. It is a pedestal with her atop (at least, in his eyes) and him at the bottom (in our eyes and, eventually, in hers). The angle is sharp. Place yourself here in either position—better in his—and you’ll see what I mean. Imagine yourself observing, watching somebody, or imagine yourself being watched. Imagine yourself interpreting someone’s movements—or immobility—unbeknownst to that person. That’s what turns you into a hunter, or into Pygmalion.

Let me press this Pygmalion business a bit further. Scrutiny and interpretation are the gist of any intense human interplay, and of love in particular. They are also the most powerful source of literature: of fiction (which is by and large about betrayal) and, above all, of lyric poetry, where one is trying to figure out the beloved and what makes her/him tick. And this figuring out brings us back to the Pygmalion business quite literally, since the more you chisel out and the more you penetrate the character, the more you put your model on a pedestal. An enclosure—be it a house, a studio, a page—intensifies this pedestal aspect enormously. And, depending on your industry and on the model’s ability to coöperate, this process results either in a masterpiece or in a disaster. In “Home Burial” it results in both. For every Galatea is ultimately a Pygmalion’s self-projection. On the other hand, art doesn’t imitate life but infects it.

So let’s watch the deportment of the model:

She was starting down, Looking back over her shoulder at some fear. She took a doubtful step and then undid it To raise herself and look again.

On the literal level, on the level of straight narrative, we have the heroine beginning to descend the steps with her head turned to us in profile, her glance lingering on some frightful sight. She hesitates and interrupts her descent, her eyes still trained, presumably, on the same sight: neither on the steps nor on the man at the bottom. But you are aware of yet another level present here, aren’t you? Let’s leave that level as yet unnamed. Each piece of information in this narrative comes to you in an isolated manner, within a pentameter line. The isolation job is done by white margins framing, as it were, the whole scene, like the silence of the house; and the lines themselves are the staircase. Basically, what you get here is a succession of frames. “She was starting down” is one frame. “Looking back over her shoulder at some fear” is another; in fact, it is a closeup, a profile—you see her facial expression. “She took a doubtful step and then undid it” is a third: again a closeup—the feet. “To raise herself and look again” is a fourth—full figure.

But this is a ballet, too. There is a minimum of two pas de deux here, conveyed to you with a wonderful euphonic, almost alliterative precision. I mean the “d”s in this line, in “doubtful” and in “undid it,” although the “t”s matter also. “Undid it” is particularly good, because you sense the spring in that step. And that profile in its opposition to the movement of the body—the very formula of a dramatic heroine—is straight out of a ballet as well.

But the real faux pas de deux starts with “He spoke / Advancing toward her.” For the next twenty-five lines, a conversation occurs on the stairs. The man climbs them as he speaks, negotiating mechanically and verbally what separates them. “Advancing” bespeaks self-consciousness and apprehensiveness. The tension grows with the growing proximity. However, the mechanical and, by implication, physical proximity is more easily attained than the verbal—i.e., the mental—and that’s what the poem is all about. “ ‘What is it you see / From up there always?—for I want to know’ ” is very much a Pygmalion question, addressed to the model on the pedestal: atop the staircase. His fascination is not with what he sees but with what he imagines it conceals—what he has placed there. He invests her with mystery and then rushes to uncloak it: this rapacity is always Pygmalion’s double bind. It is as though the sculptor found himself puzzled by the facial expression of his model: she “sees” what he does not “see.” So he has to climb to the pedestal himself, to put himself in her position. In the position of “up there always”—of topographical (vis-à-vis the house) and psychological advantage, where he put her himself. It is the latter, the psychological advantage of the creation, that disturbs the creator, as the emphatic “ ‘for I want to know’ ” shows.

The model refuses to coöperate. In the next frame (“She turned and sank upon her skirts at that”), followed by the closeup of “And her face changed from terrified to dull,” you get that lack of coöperation plain. Yet the lack of coöperation here is coöperation. For we have to bear in mind that the woman’s psychological advantage is in the man’s self-projection. He ascribes it to her. So by turning him down she only enhances his fantasy. In this sense, by refusing to coöperate she plays along. That’s basically her whole game here. The more he climbs, the greater is that advantage; he pushes her into it, as it were, with every step.

Still, he is climbing: in “he said to gain time” he climbs, and also in

“What is it you see?” Mounting until she cowered under him. “I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.”

The most important word here is the verb “see,” which we encounter for the second time. In the next nine lines, it will be used four more times. We’ll get to that in a minute. But first let’s deal with this “mounting” line and the next. It’s a masterly job here. With “mounting,” the poet kills two birds at once, for “mounting” describes both the climb and the climber. And the climber looms even larger, because the woman “cowers”—i.e., shrinks under him. Remember that she looks “at some fear.” “Mounting” versus “cowered” gives you the contrast, then, between their respective frames, with the implicit danger contained in his largeness. In any case, her alternative to fear is not comfort. And the resoluteness of “ ‘I will find out now’ ” echoes the superior physical mass, not alleviated by the cajoling “dear” that follows a remark—“ ‘you must tell me’ ”—that is both imperative and conscious of this contrast.

She, in her place, refused him any help, With the least stiffening of her neck and silence. She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see, Blind creature; and awhile he didn’t see. But at last he murmured, “Oh,” and again, “Oh.”

“What is it—what?” she said.

“Just that I see.”

“You don’t,” she challenged. “Tell me what it is.”

“The wonder is I didn’t see at once.”

And now we come to this verb “see.” Within fifteen lines it’s been used six times. Every experienced poet knows how risky it is to use the same word several times in a short space. The risk is that of tautology. So what is it that Frost is after here? I think he is after precisely that: tautology. More accurately, nonsemantic utterance. Which you get, for instance, in “ ‘Oh,’ and again, ‘Oh.’ ” Frost had a theory about what he called “sentence-sounds.” It had to do with his observation that the sound, the tonality, of human locution is as semantic as actual words. For instance, you overhear two people conversing behind a closed door, in a room. You don’t hear the words, yet you know the general drift of their dialogue; in fact, you may pretty accurately figure out its substance. In other words, the tune matters more than the lyrics, which are, so to speak, replaceable or redundant. Anyway, the repetition of this or that word liberates the tune, makes it more audible. By the same token, such repetition liberates the mind—rids you of the notion presented by the word. (This is the old Zen technique, of course, but, come to think of it, finding it in an American poem makes you wonder whether philosophical principles don’t spring from texts rather than the other way around.)

The six “see”s here do precisely that. They exclaim rather than explain. It could be “see,” it could be “Oh,” it could be “yes,” it could be any monosyllabic word. The idea is to explode the verb from within, for the content of the actual observation defeats the process of observation, its means, and the very observer. The effect that Frost tries to create is the inadequacy of response when you automatically repeat the first word that comes to your tongue. “Seeing” here is simply reeling from the unnameable. The least seeing our hero does is in “ ‘Just that I see,’ ” for by this time the verb, having already been used four times, is robbed of its “observing” and “understanding” meaning (not to mention the fact—draining the word even further of content—that we readers are ourselves still in the dark, don’t know what there is to see out that window). By now, it is just sound, denoting an animal response rather than a rational one.

This sort of explosion of bona-fide words into pure, nonsemantic sounds will occur several times in the course of this poem. Another happens very soon, ten lines later. Characteristically, these explosions occur whenever the players find themselves in close physical proximity. They are the verbal—or, better yet, the audial—equivalents of a hiatus. Frost directs them with tremendous consistency, suggesting his characters’ profound (at least, prior to this scene) incompatibility. “Home Burial” is, in fact, the study of that, and on the literal level the tragedy it describes is the characters’ comeuppance for violating each other’s territorial and mental imperatives by having a child. Now that the child is lost, the imperatives play themselves out with vehemence: they claim their own.

By standing next to the woman, the man acquires her vantage point. Because he is larger than she, and also because this is his house (as line 23 shows), where he has lived, presumably, most of his life, he must, one imagines, bend somewhat to put his eyes on her line of vision. Now they are next to each other, in an almost intimate proximity, on the threshold of their bedroom, atop the stairs. The bedroom has a window; a window has a view. And here Frost produces the most stunning simile of this poem, and perhaps of his entire career:

“The wonder is I didn’t see at once. I never noticed it from here before. I must be wonted to it—that’s the reason. The little graveyard where my people are! So small the window frames the whole of it. Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it? There are three stones of slate and one of marble, Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight On the sidehill. We haven’t to mind those . But I understand: it is not the stones, But the child’s mound—”

“ ‘The little graveyard where my people are!’ ” generates an air of endearment, and it’s with this air that “ ‘So small the window frames the whole of it’ ” starts, only to tumble itself into “ ‘Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?’ ” The key word here is “frames,” because it doubles as the window’s actual frame and as a picture on a bedroom wall. The window hangs, as it were, on the bedroom wall like a picture, and that picture depicts a graveyard. “Depicting,” though, means reducing to the size of a picture. Imagine having that in your bedroom. In the next line, though, the graveyard is restored to its actual size and, for that reason, equated with the bedroom. This equation is as much psychological as it is spatial. Inadvertently, the man blurts out the summary of the marriage (foreshadowed in the grim pun of the title). And, equally inadvertently, the “is it?” invites the woman to agree with this summary, almost implying her complicity.

As if that were not enough, the next two lines, with their stones of slate and marble, proceed to reinforce the simile, equating the graveyard with the made-up bed, with its pentametrically arranged pillows and cushions—populated by a family of small, inanimate children: “Broad-shouldered little slabs.” This is Pygmalion unbound, on a rampage. What we have here is the man’s intrusion into the woman’s mind, a violation of her mental imperative—if you will, an ossification of it. And then this ossifying hand—petrifying, actually—stretches toward what’s still raw, palpably as well as in her mind:

“But I understand: it is not the stones, But the child’s mound—”

It’s not that the contrast between the stones and the mound is too stark, though it is; it is his ability—or, rather, his attempt—to articulate it that she finds unbearable. For, should he succeed, should he find the words to articulate her mental anguish, the mound will join the stones in the “picture,” will become a slab itself, will become a pillow of their bed. Moreover, this will amount to the total penetration of her inner sanctum: that of her mind. And he is getting there:

“Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,” she cried.

She withdrew, shrinking from beneath his arm That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs; And turned on him with such a daunting look, He said twice over before he knew himself: “Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?”

The poem is gathering its dark force. Four “Don’t”s are that nonsemantic explosion, resulting in hiatus. We are so much in the story line now—up to the eyebrows—that we may forget that this is still a ballet, still a succession of frames, still an artifice, stage-managed by the poet. In fact, we are about to take sides with our characters, aren’t we? Well, I suggest we pull ourselves out of this by our eyebrows and think for a moment about what it all tells us about our poet. Imagine, for instance, that the story line has been drawn from experience—from, say, the loss of a firstborn. What does all that you’ve read thus far tell you about the author, about his sensibility? How much he is absorbed by the story and—what’s more crucial—to what degree he is free from it?

Were this a seminar, I’d wait for your answers. Since it is not, I’ve got to answer this question myself. And the answer is: He is very free. Dangerously so. The very ability to utilize—to play with—this sort of material suggests an extremely wide margin of detachment. The ability to turn this material into a blank-verse, pentameter monotone adds another degree to that detachment. To observe a relation between a family graveyard and a bedroom’s four-poster—still another. Added up, they amount to a considerable degree of detachment. A degree that dooms human interplay, that makes communication impossible, for communication requires an equal. This is very much the predicament of Pygmalion vis-à-vis his model. So it’s not that the story the poem tells is autobiographical but that the poem is the author’s self-portrait. That is why one abhors literary biography—because it is reductive. That is why I am resisting issuing you with actual data on Frost.

Where does he go, you may ask, with all that detachment? The answer is: utter autonomy. It is from there that he observes similarities among unlike things, it is from there that he imitates the vernacular. Would you like to meet Mr. Frost? Then read his poems, nothing else; otherwise, you are in for criticism from below. Would you like to be him? Would you like to become Robert Frost? Perhaps one should be advised against such aspirations. For a sensibility like this, there is very little hope of real human conjugality; and, actually, there is very little romantic dirt on him—of the sort normally indicative of such hope.

This is not necessarily a digression, but let’s get back to the lines. Remember the hiatus, and what causes it, and remember that this is an artifice. Actually, the author himself reminds you of it with

She withdrew, shrinking from beneath his arm That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs.

It is still a ballet, you see, and the stage direction is incorporated into the text. The most telling detail here is the banister. Why does the author put it here? First, to reintroduce the staircase, which we might by now have forgotten about, stunned by the business of ruining the bedroom. But, secondly, the banister prefigures her sliding downstairs, since every child uses banisters for sliding down. “And turned on him with such a daunting look” is another stage direction.

He said twice over before he knew himself: “Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?”

Now, this is a remarkably good line. It has a distinctly vernacular, almost proverbial air. And the author is definitely aware of how good it is. So, both trying to underscore its effectiveness and to obscure his awareness of it, he emphasizes the unwittingness of this utterance: “He said twice over before he knew himself.” On the literal, narrative level, we have the man stunned by the woman’s gaze, the daunting look, and groping for words. Frost was awfully good with those formulaic, quasi-proverbial one-liners. “For to be social is to be forgiving” (in “The Star-Splitter”), or “The best way out is always through” (“A Servant to Servants”), for example. And a few lines later you are going to get yet another one. They are mostly pentametric; iambic pentameter is very congenial to that sort of job.

This whole section of the poem, from “ ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t’ ” on, obviously has some sexual connotations, of her turning the man down. That’s what the story of Pygmalion and his model is all about. On the literal level, “Home Burial” evolves along similar “hard to get” lines. However, I don’t think that Frost, for all his autonomy, was conscious of that. (After all, “North of Boston” shows no acquaintance with Freudian terminology.) And, if he was not, this sort of approach on our part is invalid. Nevertheless, we should bear some of it in mind as we are embarking on the bulk of this poem:

“Not you!—Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it! I must get out of here. I must get air.— I don’t know rightly whether any man can.” “Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time. Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs.” He sat and fixed his chin between his fists. “There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.” “You don’t know how to ask it.”

“Help me, then.” Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

What we’ve got here is the desire to escape: not so much the man as the enclosure of the place, not to mention the subject of their exchange. Yet the resolution is incomplete, as the fidgeting with the hat shows, since the execution of this desire will be counterproductive for the model as far as being the subject of explication goes. May I go so far as to suggest that that would mean a loss of advantage, not to mention that it would be the end of the poem? In fact, it does end with precisely that, with her exit. The literal level will get into conflict, or fusion, with the metaphorical. Hence “ ‘I don’t know rightly whether any man can,’ ” which fuses both these levels, forcing the poem to proceed; you don’t know any longer who is the horse here, who is the cart. I doubt whether the poet himself knew that at this point. The fusion’s result is the release of a certain force, which subordinates his pen, and the best it can do is keep both strands—literal and metaphorical—in check.

We learn the heroine’s name, and that this sort of discourse had its precedents, with nearly identical results. Given the fact that we know the way the poem ends, we may judge—well, we may imagine—the character of those occasions. The scene in “Home Burial” is but a repetition. By this token, the poem doesn’t so much inform us about their life as replace it. We also learn, from “ ‘Don’t go to someone else this time,’ ” about a mixture of jealousy and sense of shame felt by at least one of them. And we learn, from “ ‘I won’t come down the stairs’ ” and from “He sat and fixed his chin between his fists,” about the fear of violence present in their physical proximity. The latter line is a wonderful embodiment of stasis, very much in the fashion of Rodin’s “Penseur,” albeit with two fists, which is a very telling self-referential detail, since the forceful application of fist to chin is what results in a knockout.

The main thing here, though, is the reintroduction of the stairs. Not only the literal stairs but the steps in “he sat,” too. From now on, the entire dialogue occurs on the stairs, though they have become the scene of an impasse rather than a passage. No physical steps are taken. Instead, we have their verbal, or oral, substitute. The ballet ends, yielding to the verbal advance and retreat, which is heralded by “ ‘There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.’ ” Note again the air of cajoling, colored this time with the recognition of its futility in “dear.” Note also the last semblance of actual interplay in “ ‘You don’t know how to ask it.’ ‘Help me, then’ ”—this last knocking on the door, or, better yet, on the wall. Note “Her fingers moved the latch for all reply,” because this feint of trying for the door is the last physical movement, the last theatrical or cinematic gesture in the poem, save one more latch-trying.

“My words are nearly always an offense. I don’t know how to speak of anything So as to please you. But I might be taught, I should suppose. I can’t say I see how. A man must partly give up being a man With womenfolk. We could have some arrangement By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off Anything special you’re a-mind to name. Though I don’t like such things ’twixt those that love. Two that don’t love can’t live together without them. But two that do can’t live together with them.” She moved the latch a little.

The speaker’s hectic mental pacing is fully counterbalanced by his immobility. If this is a ballet, it is a mental one. In fact, it’s very much like fencing: not with an opponent or a shadow but with one’s self. The lines are constantly taking a step forward and then undoing it. (“She took a doubtful step and then undid it.”) The main technical device here is enjambment, which physically resembles descending the stairs. In fact, this back-and-forth, this give-and-take almost gives you a sense of being short of breath. Until, that is, the release that is coming with the formulaic, folksy “ ‘A man must partly give up being a man / With womenfolk.’ ”

After this release, you get three lines of more evenly paced verse, almost a tribute to iambic pentameter’s proclivity for coherence, ending with the pentametrically triumphant “ ‘Though I don’t like such things ’twixt those that love.’ ” And here our poet makes another not so subdued dash toward the proverbial: “ ‘Two that don’t love can’t live together without them. / But two that do can’t live together with them’ ”—though this comes off as a bit cumbersome, and not entirely convincing.

Frost partly senses that: hence “She moved the latch a little.” But that’s only one explanation. The whole point of this qualifier-burdened monologue is the explication of its addressee. The man is groping for understanding. He realizes that in order to understand he’s got to surrender—if not suspend entirely—his rationality. In other words, he descends. But this is really running down stairs that lead upward. And, partly from rapidly approaching the end of his wits, partly out of purely rhetorical inertia, he summons here the notion of love. In other words, this quasi-proverbial two-liner about love is a rational argument, and that, of course, is not enough for its addressee.

For the more she is explicated, the more remote she gets: the higher her pedestal grows (which is perhaps of specific importance to her now that she is downstairs). It’s not grief that drives her out of the house but the dread of being explicated, as well as of the explicator himself. She wants to stay impenetrable and won’t accept anything short of his complete surrender. And he is well on the way to it:

“Don’t—don’t go. Don’t carry it to someone else this time. Tell me about it if it’s something human.”

The last is the most stunning, most tragic line, in my view, in the entire poem. It amounts practically to the heroine’s ultimate victory—i.e., to the aforementioned rational surrender on the part of the explicator. For all its colloquial air, it promotes her mental operations to supernatural status, thus acknowledging infinity—ushered into her mind by the child’s death—as his rival. Against this he is powerless, since her access to that infinity, her absorption by and commerce with it, is backed in his eyes by the whole mythology of the opposite sex—by the whole notion of the alternative being impressed upon him by her at this point rather thoroughly. That’s what he is losing her to by staying rational. It is a shrill, almost hysterical line, admitting the man’s limitations and momentarily bringing the whole discourse to a plane of regard that the heroine could be at home on—the one she perhaps seeks. But only momentarily. He can’t proceed at this level, and succumbs to pleading:

“Let me into your grief. I’m not so much Unlike other folks as your standing there Apart would make me out. Give me my chance. I do think, though, you overdo it a little. What was it brought you up to think it the thing To take your mother-loss of a first child So inconsolably—in the face of love. You’d think his memory might be satisfied—”

He tumbles down, as it were, from the hysterical height of “ ‘Tell me about it if it’s something human.’ ” But this tumble, this mental knocking about the metrically lapsing stairs, restores him to rationality, with all its attendant qualifiers. That brings him rather close to the heart of the matter—to her taking her “ ‘mother-loss of a first child / So inconsolably’ ”—and he evokes the catchall notion of love again, this time somewhat more convincingly, though still tinged with a rhetorical flourish: “ ‘in the face of love.’ ” The very word—“love”—undermines its emotional reality, reducing the sentiment to its utilitarian application: as a means of overcoming tragedy. However, overcoming tragedy deprives its victim of the status of hero or heroine. This, combined with the resentment over the explicator’s lowering of his explication’s plane of regard, results in the heroine’s interruption of “ ‘You’d think his memory might be satisfied—’ ” with “ ‘There you go sneering now!’ ” It’s Galatea’s self-defense, the defense against the further application of the chiselling instrument to her already attained features.

Because of its absorbing story line, there is a strong temptation to bill “Home Burial” as a tragedy of incommunicability, a poem about the failure of language; and many have succumbed to this temptation. In fact, it is just the reverse: it is a tragedy of communication, for communication’s logical end is the violation of your interlocutor’s mental imperative. This is a poem about language’s terrifying success, for language, in the final analysis, is alien to the sentiments it articulates. No one is more aware of that than a poet; and, if “Home Burial” is autobiographical, it is so in the first place by revealing Frost’s grasp of the collision between his métier and his emotions. To drive this point home, may I suggest that you compare the actual sentiment you may feel toward an individual in your company and the word “love.” A poet is doomed to resort to words. So is the speaker in “Home Burial.” Hence, their overlapping in this poem; hence, too, its autobiographical reputation.

But let us take it a step further. The poet here should be identified not with one character but with both. He is the man here, all right, but he is the woman also. Thus you’ve got a clash not just of two sensibilities but of two languages. Sensibilities may merge—say, in the act of love; languages can’t. Sensibilities may result in a child; languages won’t. And, now that the child is dead, what’s left is two totally autonomous languages, two non-overlapping systems of verbalization. In short: words. His versus hers, and hers are fewer. This makes her enigmatic. Enigmas are subject to explication, which they resist—in her case, with all she’s got. His job, or, more exactly, the job of his language, is, therefore, the explication of her language, or, more exactly, her reticence. Which, when it comes to human interplay, is a recipe for disaster. When it comes to a poem, an enormous challenge.

Small wonder, then, that this “dark pastoral” grows darker with every line; it proceeds by aggravation, reflecting not so much the complexity of the author’s mind as words’ own appetite for disaster. For the more you push reticence, the greater it gets, having nothing to fall back upon but itself. The enigma thus grows bigger. It’s like Napoleon invading Russia and finding that it goes beyond the Urals. Small wonder that this “dark pastoral” of ours has no choice but to proceed by aggravation, for the poet’s mind plays both the invading army and the territory; in the end, he can’t take sides. It is a sense of the incomprehensible vastness of what lies ahead, defeating not only the notion of conquest but the very sense of progress, that informs both “ ‘Tell me about it if it’s something human’ ” and the lines that follow “ ‘There you go sneering now!’ ”:

“I’m not, I’m not! You make me angry. I’ll come down to you. God, what a woman!”

A language invading reticence gets no trophy here, save the echo of its own words. All it has to show for its efforts is a good old line that brought it nowhere before:

“And it’s come to this, A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.”

It, too, falls back on itself. A stalemate.

It’s broken by the woman. More exactly, her reticence is broken. Which could be regarded by the male character as success, were it not for what she surrenders. Which is not so much an offensive as a negation of all the man stands for.

“You can’t because you don’t know how to speak. If you had any feelings, you that dug With your own hand—how could you?—his little grave; I saw you from that very window there, Making the gravel leap and leap in air, Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly And roll back down the mound beside the hole. I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you. And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs To look again, and still your spade kept lifting. Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice Out in the kitchen, and I don’t know why, But I went near to see with my own eyes. You could sit there with the stains on your shoes Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave And talk about your everyday concerns. You had stood the spade up against the wall Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.”

“I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed. I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.”

This is the voice of a very foreign territory indeed: a foreign language. It is a view of the man from a distance he can’t possibly fathom, since it is proportionate to the frequency with which the heroine creeps up and down the stairs. Which, in its own right, is proportionate to the leaps of his gravel in the course of his digging the grave. Whatever the ratio, it is not in favor of his actual or mental steps toward her on that staircase. Nor in his favor is the rationale behind her creeping up and down the stairs while he is digging. Presumably, there is nobody else around to do the job. (That they lost their firstborn suggests that they are fairly young and thus not very well off.) Presumably also, by performing this menial task, and by doing it in a particularly mechanical way—as a remarkably skillful mimetic job in the pentameter here indicates (or as is charged by the heroine)—the man is quelling, or controlling, his grief; that is, his movements, unlike the heroine’s, are functional.

In short, this is futility’s view of utility. For obvious reasons, this view is usually precise and rich in judgment: “ ‘If you had any feelings,’ ” and “ ‘Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly / And roll back down the mound beside the hole.’ ” Depending on the length of observation—and the description of digging runs here for nine lines—this view may result, as it does here, in a sensation of utter disparity between the observer and the observed: “ ‘I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.’ ” For observation, you see, results in nothing, while digging produces at least a mound, or a hole. Whose mental equivalent in the observer is also, as it were, a grave. Or, rather, a fusion of the man and his purpose, not to mention his instrument. What futility and Frost’s pentameter register here above all is rhythm. The heroine observes an inanimate machine. The man in her eye is a gravedigger, and thus her alternative.

Now, the sight of our alternative is always unwelcome, not to say threatening. The closer your view of it, the sharper your general sense of guilt and of a deserved comeuppance. In the mind of a woman who has lost her child, that sense may be fairly sharp. Add to that her inability to translate her grief into any useful action, save a highly agitated creeping up and down, as well as the recognition—and subsequent glorification—of that inability. And add a cross-purpose correspondence between her movements and his: between her steps and his spade. What do you think it would result in? And remember that she is in his house, that this is the graveyard where his people are. And that he is a gravedigger.

“Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice Out in the kitchen, and I don’t know why, But I went near to see with my own eyes.”

Note this “and I don’t know why,” for here she unwittingly drifts toward her own projection. All that she needs now is to check that projection with her own eyes. That is, she wants to make her mental picture physical:

“You could sit there with the stains on your shoes Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave And talk about your everyday concerns. You had stood the spade up against the wall Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.”

So what do you think she sees with her own eyes, and what does that sight prove? What does the frame contain this time? What does she have a closeup of? I am afraid she sees a murder weapon: she sees a blade. The fresh earth stains either on the shoes or on his spade make the spade’s edge shine: make it into a blade. And does earth “stain,” however fresh? Her very choice of noun, denoting liquid, suggests—accuses—blood. What should our man have done? Should he have taken his shoes off before entering the house? Perhaps. Perhaps he should have left his spade outside, too. But he is a farmer, and acts like one—presumably out of fatigue. So he brings in his instrument—in her eyes, the instrument of death. And the same goes for his shoes, and it goes for the rest of the man. A gravedigger is equated here, if you will, with the reaper. And there are only the two of them in this house.

The most awful bit is “for I saw it,” because it emphasizes the perceived symbolism of that spade left standing against the wall outside there in the entry: for future use. Or as a guard. Or as an unwitting memento mori. At the same time, “for I saw it” conveys the capriciousness of her perception and the triumph of somebody who cannot be fooled, the triumph of catching the enemy. It is futility in full bloom, engulfing and absorbing utility into its shadow.

This is practically a nonverbal recognition of defeat, coming in the form of a typical Frostian understatement, studded with tautological monosyllables quickly abandoning their semantic functions. Our Napoleon or Pygmalion is completely routed by his creation, who still keeps pressing on.

“I can repeat the very words you were saying: ‘Three foggy mornings and one rainy day Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.’ Think of it, talk like that at such a time! What had how long it takes a birch to rot To do with what was in the darkened parlor?”

Now, this is where our poem effectively ends. The rest is simply dénouement, in which our heroine goes rambling on in an increasingly incoherent fashion about death, the world being evil, uncaring friends, and feeling alone. It is a rather hysterical monologue, whose only function, in terms of the story line, is to struggle toward a release for what has been pent up in her mind. It does not, and in the end she resorts to the door, as though only landscape were proportionate to her mental state and thus could be of solace.

And, quite possibly, it is. A conflict within an enclosure—a house, say—normally deteriorates into tragedy, because the rectangularity of the place itself puts a higher premium on reason, offering emotion only a straitjacket. Thus in the house the man is the master not only because the house is his but because—within the context of the poem—rationality is his. In a landscape, “Home Burial” ’s dialogue would have run a different course; in a landscape, the man would be the loser. The drama would perhaps be even greater, for it’s one thing when the house sides with a character, and another when the elements do so. In any case, that’s why she is trying for the door.

So let’s get back to the five lines that precede the dénouement—to this business of rotting birches. “Three foggy mornings and one rainy day / Will rot the best birch fence a man can build,” our farmer is quoted as saying, sitting there in the kitchen, clods of fresh earth on his shoes and the spade standing up there in the entry. One may ascribe this phrase again to his fatigue and to the next task in store for him: building a little fence around the new grave. However, since this is not a public but a family graveyard, the fence he mentioned might indeed be one of his everyday concerns, something else he has to deal with. And presumably he mentions it to take his mind off what he has just finished doing. Still, for all his effort, the mind is not entirely taken, as the verb “rot” indicates: the line contains the shadow of the hidden comparison—if a fence rots so quickly in the damp air, how quickly will a little coffin rot in earth damp enough to leave “stains” on his shoes? But the heroine once again resists the encompassing gambits of language—metaphor, irony, litotes—and goes straight for the literal meaning, the absolute. And that’s what she jumps on in “ ‘What had how long it takes a birch to rot / To do with what was in the darkened parlor?’ ” What is remarkable here is how diverse their treatment of the notion of rotting is. While he is talking about a “birch fence,” which is a clear deflection, not to mention a reference to something above the ground, she zeroes in on “what was in the darkened parlor.” It’s understandable that, being a mother, she concentrates—that Frost makes her concentrate—on the dead child. Yet her way of referring to it is highly roundabout, even euphemistic: “what was in.” Not to mention that she refers to her dead child as a “what,” not a “who.” We don’t learn his name, and, for all we know, he didn’t have much of a life after his birth. And then you should note her reference to the grave: “the darkened parlor.”

Now, with “darkened parlor,” the poet finishes his portrait of the heroine. We have to bear in mind that this is a rural setting, that the heroine lives in “his” house—i.e., that she came here from without. And the “darkened parlor” is an answer to the question “From where?” since, in the context of the poem, it strikes one as very much an urbane locution. I’d say it is distinctly Victorian, though we can’t be sure, as “Home Burial” was written some time before 1914.

I think you will agree that this is not a European poem. Not French, not Italian, not German, not even English. I also can assure you that it is not Russian at all. And, in terms of what American poetry is like today, it is not American, either. It’s Frost’s own, and he has been dead for over a quarter of a century now. Small wonder then that one rambles on about his lines at such length, and in strange places, though he no doubt would wince at being introduced to a French audience by a Russian. On the other hand, he was no stranger to incongruity.

So what was it that he was after in this, his very own poem? He was, I think, after grief and reason, which, while poison to each other, are language’s most efficient fuel—or, if you will, poetry’s indelible ink. Frost’s reliance on them here and elsewhere almost gives you the sense that his dipping into this inkpot had to do with the hope of reducing the level of its contents; you detect a sort of vested interest on his part. Yet the more one dips into it, the more it brims with this black essence of existence, and the more one’s mind, like one’s fingers, gets soiled by this liquid. For the more there is of grief, the more there is of reason. As much as one may be tempted to take sides in “Home Burial,” the presence of the narrator here rules this out, for, while the characters stand, respectively, for reason and for grief, the narrator stands for their fusion. To put it differently, while the characters’ actual union disintegrates, the story, as it were, marries grief to reason, since the bond of the narrative here supersedes the individual dynamics—well, at least for the reader. Perhaps for the author as well. The poem, in other words, plays fate.

I suppose it is this sort of marriage that Frost was after, or perhaps the other way around. Many years ago, on a flight from New York to Detroit, I chanced upon an essay by the poet’s daughter printed in the American Airlines in-flight magazine. In that essay Lesley Frost says that her father and her mother were co-valedictorians at the high school they both attended. While she doesn’t recall the topic of her father’s speech on that occasion, she remembers what she was told was her mother’s. It was called something like “Conversation as a Force in Life” (or “the Living Force”). If, as I hope, someday you find a copy of “North of Boston” and read it, you’ll realize that Elinor White’s topic is, in a nutshell, the main structural device of that collection, for most of the poems in “North of Boston” are dialogues—are conversations. In this sense, we are dealing here—in “Home Burial,” as elsewhere in “North of Boston”—with love poetry, or, if you will, with poetry of obsession: not that of a man with a woman so much as that of an argument with a counterargument—of a voice with a voice. That goes for monologues as well, actually, since a monologue is one’s argument with oneself; take, for instance, “To be or not to be . . .” That’s why poets so often resort to writing plays. In the end, of course, it was not the dialogue that Robert Frost was after but the other way around, if only because by themselves two voices amount to little. Fused, they set in motion something that, for want of a better term, we may just as well call “life.” This is why “Home Burial” ends with a dash, not with a period.

If this poem is dark, darker still is the mind of its maker, who plays all three roles: the man, the woman, and the narrator. Their equal reality, taken separately or together, is still inferior to that of the poem’s author, since “Home Burial” is but one poem among many. The price of his autonomy is, of course, in its coloration, and perhaps what you ultimately get out of this poem is not its story but the vision of its ultimately autonomous maker. The characters and the narrator are, as it were, pushing the author out of any humanly palatable context: he stands outside, denied reëntry, perhaps not coveting it at all. This is the dialogue’s—alias the Life Force’s—doing. And this particular posture, this utter autonomy, strikes me as utterly American. Hence this poet’s monotone, his pentametric drawl: a signal from a far-distant station. One may liken him to a spacecraft that, as the downward pull of gravity weakens, finds itself nonetheless in the grip of a different gravitational force: outward. The fuel, though, is still the same: grief and reason. The only thing that conspires against this metaphor of mine is that American spacecrafts usually return. ♦

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Quote Investigator®

Tracing Quotations

In Three Words, I Can Sum Up Everything I’ve Learned About Life. It Goes On

Robert Frost? Edna St. Vincent Millay? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: The acclaimed American poet Robert Frost was asked as an octogenarian what he had learned about life, and he succinctly replied: It goes on.

I have been unable to find a contemporaneous citation, and a popular quotation website says that the attribution is disputed. What do you think?

Quote Investigator: Robert Frost did utter this proverbial wisdom during his eightieth birthday celebration according to journalist and self-help writer Ray Josephs. In September 1954 the Sunday newspaper supplement “This Week Magazine” published “Robert Frost’s Secret” by Josephs which included the following exchange. Ellipses were in the original text. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI : [1] 1954 September 5, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Section: This Week Magazine, Robert Frost’s Secret by Ray Josephs, Quote Page 2, Column 1, Cincinnati, Ohio. (Newspapers_com)

“In all your years and all your travels,” I asked, “what do you think is the most important thing you’ve learned about life?” He paused a moment, then with the twinkle sparkling under those brambly eyebrows he replied: “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on. In all the confusions of today, with all our troubles . . . with politicians and people slinging the word fear around, all of us become discouraged . . . tempted to say this is the end, the finish. But life — it goes on. It always has. It always will. Don’t forget that.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

The adage was certainly not novel although Frost’s emphatic version was memorable. Decades earlier in 1915 fellow poet Edna St. Vincent Millay placed a sardonic instance into a verse of the work “Ashes of Life”: [2] 1915 September, Current Opinion, Volume 59, Number 3, Edited by Edward J. Wheeler, Voices of the Living Poets: Ashes of Life by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Quote Page 200, Column 3, The Current … Continue reading

Love has gone and left me, and the neighbors knock and borrow. And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse. — And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow There’s this little street and this little house.

In 1971 the “Des Moines Sunday Register” reprinted the article containing Frost’s statement under the title “Words To Live By”. [3] 1971 January 24, Des Moines Sunday Register (The Des Moines Register), Section: Picture, Words To Live By, (Today’s Words To Live By were selected by Author Ray Josephs), Quote Page 2, Column … Continue reading

In 1978 the syndicated feature “The Aces on Bridge” relayed an instance of the saying: [4] 1978 February 1, The Ithaca Journal, The Aces on Bridge: West learned too late by Ira G. Corn Jr., Quote Page 26, Column 5, Ithaca, New York. (Newspapers_com)

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” —Robert Frost.

In 1984 the Associated Press published the following “Thought for today”: [5] 1984 April 2, Casper Star-Tribune, Almanac by The Associated Press, Quote Page B2, Column 3, Casper, Wyoming. (Newspapers_com)

Thought for today: “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.” — Robert Frost, American poet (1874-1963).

In conclusion, there is substantive evidence that Robert Frost did make the remarks in the 1954 citation. The accuracy of the quotation depends on the testimony of Ray Josephs.

(Great thanks to Lino’s Version whose tweet led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.)

References
↑1	1954 September 5, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Section: This Week Magazine, Robert Frost’s Secret by Ray Josephs, Quote Page 2, Column 1, Cincinnati, Ohio. (Newspapers_com)
↑2	1915 September, Current Opinion, Volume 59, Number 3, Edited by Edward J. Wheeler, Voices of the Living Poets: Ashes of Life by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Quote Page 200, Column 3, The Current Literature Publishing Company, New York. (Google Books Full View)
↑3	1971 January 24, Des Moines Sunday Register (The Des Moines Register), Section: Picture, Words To Live By, (Today’s Words To Live By were selected by Author Ray Josephs), Quote Page 2, Column 2, Des Moines, Iowa. (Newspapers_com)
↑4	1978 February 1, The Ithaca Journal, The Aces on Bridge: West learned too late by Ira G. Corn Jr., Quote Page 26, Column 5, Ithaca, New York. (Newspapers_com)
↑5	1984 April 2, Casper Star-Tribune, Almanac by The Associated Press, Quote Page B2, Column 3, Casper, Wyoming. (Newspapers_com)

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