Robert Frost
Robert Frost Poems
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
...
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
...
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
...
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
...
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
...
A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.
...
When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.
...
I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;
Have clapped my hands at him from the door
...
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
...
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it plowed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
...
The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple's a rose,
...
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
...
There's a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.
...
He halted in the wind, and - what was that
Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost?
He stood there bringing March against his thought,
And yet too ready to believe the most.
...
The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
...
A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.
...
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
...
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
...
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
...
All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
...
Robert Frost Biography
Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet who is widely considered one of the most important and influential poets of the 20th century. He was born in San Francisco, California, but spent most of his childhood in New England, where he developed a love for the natural world that would later become a major theme in his poetry. Frost attended Dartmouth College and later Harvard University, but he did not graduate from either school. Instead, he worked a variety of jobs, including as a teacher and a farmer, while also writing and publishing poetry. In 1912, he moved his family to England, where he became friends with several prominent poets, including Edward Thomas and Rupert Brooke. Frost's first book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published in 1913, followed by North of Boston in 1914. These books established Frost's reputation as a major poetic voice, and he went on to publish many more volumes of poetry over the course of his career. Frost's poetry often explores themes of nature, rural life, and the human condition. He is known for his use of traditional forms and meters, as well as his skillful use of language and imagery. Some of his most famous poems include "The Road Not Taken," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," and "Mending Wall." Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times during his career, and he was also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960. He died in 1963 at the age of 88, leaving behind a legacy as one of the greatest poets of his time.
Robert Frost Childhood
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California. Robert Frost’s father is journalist William Prescott Frost who is descended from Nicholas Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the Wolfrana. His mother is of Scottish descent Isabelle Moodie. Frost's father was a teacher at the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. This place could be later to become the San Francisco Examiner. After his father died on May 5, 1885, the family eventually moved nationwide to Lawrence, Massachusetts, under the auspices of Robert's grandfather who is William Frost Sr., the foreman of a New England factory. Frost graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892. At the same time, Frost's mother joined the Swedish Bolivian Church, where she was baptized, but he left her as an adult. In spite of, his later association with rural life, Frost grew up in the city, and published his first poem in his high school's magazine. Then he attended Dartmouth College long enough to be accepted into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. Frost returned home to teach and to work at various jobs including delivering newspapers and factory labor. He did not enjoy these jobs at all, feeling his true calling as a poet.
Adult years
In 1894, he sold his first poem, My Butterfly: An Elegy that poem published in New York Independent, November 8, 1894 for $ 15. Proud of this success, he proposed to Erinor Miriam White to marry her, but he rejected because she wanted to graduate from college before her marriage. Frost then traveled to Greater Dismal Swamp, Virginia, and asked again when he returned to Erinor for marriage. After her graduation, she agreed. He and Elinor were married on December 19, 1895. Their first child, a son they named Elliott, was born on September 29, 1896. Robert was accepted at Harvard as a special student, but had to drop out due to tuberculosis and the birth of the couple's second child in 1899. He never finished his college education. After working at Harvard, he left to help his growing family. His grandfather Frost had bought a farm for young couple in Derry, New Hampshire, shortly before his death. Robert then worked on the farm for nine years, writing early in the morning and producing many of the later famous poems. Eventually his farming failed and he returned to teach English teacher at Pinkerton Academy and New Hampshire Normal School (now Plymouth State University) in Plymouth. In 1912 Frost sailed with his family to Great Britain. His first book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published in 1913. Frost wrote some of his best work while in England. As the new century dawned, the Frost family was afflicted with the first of the tragedies that would dog them all of their lives. Elliott contracted cholera and died in July of 1900, a development that rocked the Frost marriage (Frost later addressed the event in his poem "Home Burial"). Frost's mother died that year from cancer, and his grandfather, William Prescott Frost Sr., passed away in 1901. As World War I began, Frost returned to America in 1915. He bought a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he launched a career of writing, teaching, and lecturing. This family homestead served as the Frosts' summer home until 1938, and is maintained today as 'The Frost Place', a museum and poetry conference site at Franconia. During the years 1916–20, 1923–24, and 1927–1938, Frost taught English at Amherst College, Massachusetts, notably encouraging his students to account for the sounds of the human voice in their writing. As World War I began, Frost returned to America in 1915. He bought a ranch in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he launched a career of teaching, writing, and lecturing. This family homestead served as the Frosts' summer home until 1938, and is maintained moment as' The Frost Place', a museum at Franconia. For forty-two years, from 1921 to 1963, Frost taught at the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College, at the mountain campus at Ripton, Vermont. He is credited as a great effect upon the development of the school and its writing programs; the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference gained reputation during Frost's tenure there. Harvard's 1965 alumni guidebook specifies Frost received an honorary degree there. He also received honorary degrees from Bates College and from Oxford and Cambridge universities; and he was the first person to take two honorary degrees from Dartmouth College. Frost has been frequently but erroneously mentioned as a Nobel laureate, but he never won the prize. Frost was 86 when he spoke and did a reading of his poetry at the opening of President John F. Kennedy on January 20, 1961. Approximately two years later, on January 29, 1963, he died, in Boston, of complications from prostate surgery. He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph reads, "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." In 1996 three poets who won the Nobel Prize for literature, Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott jointly published an homage to the influence of Frost, whom they feel is one of literature's greatest poets. Against the end of his life he had achieved a popular acclaim unique for an American poet, though his critical reputation had declined due to a diminution of his powers. "A Witness Tree", his last truly important book of verse, was published in 1942. His final three books of poetry were not as praised as his older poetry had been, though certain pieces were acknowledged as among his best. Frost's poems are critiqued in the "Anthology of Modern American Poetry", Oxford University Press, where it is mentioned. One of the inventive collections of Frost materials, to which he himself contributed, is found in the Special Collections department of the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts. The collection consists of approximately twelve thousand items, including original manuscript poems and letters, correspondence, and photographs, as well as audio and visual recordings.)
The Best Poem Of Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost Comments
whenever I'm exhausted or bored I just grab a copy of his poems that keeps me engrossed in his enchanted world -which is lovely, dark and deep
Mymy name is walter Hartwell White. I live at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque, New Mexico,87104
Robert Frost Quotes
You linger your little hour and are gone, And still the woods sweep leafily on....
Some say existence like a Pirouot And Pirouette, forever in one place, Stands still and dances, but it runs away; It seriously, sadly, runs away To fill the abyss's void with emptiness.
He showed me that the lines of a good helve Were native to the grain before the knife Expressed them, and its curves were no false curves Put on it from without.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better.
The world has room to make a bear feel free; The universe seems cramped to you and me.
We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? Do we know any better where we are, And how it stands between the night tonight And a man with a smoky lantern chimney? How different from the way it ever stood?
The mountain pushed us off her knees. And now her lap is full of trees.
For I thought Epicurus and Lucretius By Nature meant the Whole Goddam Machinery.
The house one story high in front, three stories On the end it presented to the road.
He will be starting pretty late. He'll find that Asiatic state Is about tired of being looted While having its beliefs disputed.
But the worst one of all to leave uncurbed, Unsocialized, is ingenuity: Which for no sordid self-aggrandizement, For nothing but its own blind satisfaction ...
He meditates the breeder's art. He has a half a mind to start, With her for Mother Eve, a race That shall all living things displace.
Memento mori and obey the Lord. Art and religion love the somber chord.
A poem ... begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.... It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.
The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square With the new city street it has to wear A number in. But what about the brook That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
We meet I don't say when But must bring to the meeting the maturest, The longest-saved-up, raciest, localest We have strength of reserve in us to bring.
Before now poetry has taken notice Of wars, and what are wars but politics Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody?
What an exciting age it is we live in With all this talk about the hope of youth And nothing made of youth.
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth. How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed On through the watching for that early birth When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, The sturdy seedling with arched body comes Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.
I write real verse in numbers, as they say. I'm talking not free verse but blank verse now.
Sea waves are green and wet, But up from where they die Rise others vaster yet, And those are brown and dry.
It doesn't seem so much to climb a mountain You've worked around the foot of all your life.
But not gold in commercial quantities, Just enough gold to make the engagement rings And marriage rings of those who owned the farm. What gold more innocent could one have asked for?
Nothing will be left white but here a birch, And there a clump of houses with a church.
Burst into my narrow stall; Swing the picture on the wall; Run the rattling pages o'er; Scatter poems on the floor; Turn the poet out of door.
"Really, friend, I can't let you. You may need them." "Not till I shrink, when they'll be out of style." "But really I——I have so many collars." "I don't know who I rather would have have them. They're only turning yellow where they are. But you're the doctor, as the saying is. I'll put the light out. Don't you wait for me...."
Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me.
Lancaster bore him such a little town, Such a great man. It doesn't see him often Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead And sends the children down there with their mother To run wild in the summer a little wild.
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, But still lies pointed as it plowed the dust.
Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
"... It's a day's work To empty one house of all household goods And fill another with 'em fifteen miles away, Although you do no more than dump them down."
States strong enough to do good are but few. Their number would seem limited to three.
"... Not but I've every reason not to care What happens to him if it only takes Some of the sanctimonious conceit Out of one of those pious scalawags."
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
I know that winter death has never tried The earth but it has failed:
Your head so much concerned with outer, Mine with inner, weather.
Such as even poets would admit perforce More practical than Pegasus the horse If it could put a star back in its course.
"It looks as if Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat And its eyes shut with overeagerness To see what people found so interesting In one another, and had gone to sleep Of its own stupid lack of understanding, Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff Short off, and died against the windowpane."
For these have governed in our lives, And see how men have warred. The Cross, the Crown, the Scales may all As well have been the Sword.
And anyone is free to condemn me to death If he leaves it to nature to carry out the sentence. I shall will to the common stock of air my breath And pay a death tax of fairly polite repentance.
The headless aftermath ...
Love and forgetting might have carried them A little further up the mountainside With night so near, but not much further up.
When I see young men doing so wonderfully well in athletics, I don't feel angry at them. I feel jealous of them. I wish that some of my boys in writing would do the same thing.... You must have form—performance. The thing itself is indescribable, but it is felt like athletic form. To have form, feel form in sports—and by analogy feel form in verse. One works and waits for form in both. As I said, the person who spends his time criticizing the play around him will never write poetry. He will write criticism.
Slow, slow! For the grapes' sake, if they were all, Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, Whose clustered fruit must else be lost For the grapes' sake along the wall.
I have remained resentful to this day When any but myself presumed to say That there was anything I couldn't be.
The furthest bodies To which man sends his Speculation, Beyond which God is; The cosmic motes Of yawning lenses.
The tree the tempest with a crash of wood Throws down in front of us is not to bar Our passage to our journey's end for good, But just to ask us who we think we are....
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
I am assured at any rate Man's practically inexterminate. Someday I must go into that. There's always been an Ararat Where someone someone else begat To start the world all over at.
Poor egotist, he has no way of knowing But he's as good as anybody going.
Robert Frost Popularity
Robert Frost Popularity
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12/15/2024 8:16:27 AM # 1.0.0
I like almost all his poems, but especially love 'Dust of Snow' - its last 2 lines are wonderful.. The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued. Robert Frost, 'Dust of Snow' (1923)