Robert Frost (1874-1963)
About Robert Frost
Frost was born on March 26th, 1874 in San Fransicsco to Isabelle Mooside and William Prescott Frost Jr. With both parents being teachers, and his father also being a journalist, Frost was introduced to writing, and books at a very early age. This introduction included the works of William Shakespeare, Robert Burns, and William Wordsworth; all of whom would later prove to be inspiring in Frost's own works. His father's age when he was only 11, and along with his love for the outdoors, nature, and the rural countryside, would present the major themes for his future works. Frost later attended Dartmouth in 1892 and received two honorary degrees, finishing at Harvard where he studied for two years without receiving a degree due to an illness. It was during his time at school, in 1895 when he married his high school sweet-heart named Eleanor White. Together they would have 6 children, live on farm, and spend the rest of their careers as teachers. Frost in his career even taught at the local college in Amherst, Massachusetts, where Emily Dickenson lived her entire life. It would be in Massachusetts where he would die on January 29, 1963. During his career and marriage however, he continued to write poetry, such as his most famous poems, “After Apple-picking”, “The Road not taken”, “Home Burial”, and “Mending Wall”. During his lifetime, this brilliant man received four Pulitzer prizes for the American Poet Award, and have to two colleges named in his honor. Robert Frost will forever be missed in the literary world, yet even in his death he was able to create poetry, for on his tombstone is the phrase, “I had a Lover’s Quarrel With The World”.
Sources:
Merriman, C.D.. "Robert Frost." The Literature Network. 2006. Online-Literature. 8 May 2007 <www.online-literature.com/frost/>
"Robert Frost." American Poems. 1995. 8 May 2007 <www.americanpoems.com/poets/robertfrost>
A few poems by Robert Frost:
Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there,
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Explanation of Mending Wall
The speaker of the poem is a man who is talking about his neighbor putting up a stone fence to keep himself away from others. However, the neighbor thinks “Good fences make good neighbors,” because then you can have your privacy. The speaker does not agree with his neighbor’s statement and thinks a wall is only used to keep the cattle apart. In the poem when the speaker refers to “something” that doesn’t want the wall erect and he is referring to the hunters and how they destroy the wall. The speaker then talks about how the wall constantly needs mending and how the stones fall off and the man must repair them because the hunters have destroyed them. In this poem the wall is used as a symbol for privacy. This is a way for him to keep to and be away from the neighbors and to keep them away from him. The speaker also thinks his neighbor “moves in the darkness… /Not of woods only and the shades of trees.” This gives the idea that the neighbor is living in darkness because he has fenced himself in from the world and possibly doesn’t want anyone else around.
Birches
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.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
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.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Explanation of Birches
In this poem Frost dreams of going back to his childhood when his life was simple and carefree. This peaceful and uninhibited time being when he was swinging among the birch trees; it is through this image that Frost conveys his means to go back and forth between his own version of heaven and back down to earth. Upon remembering this time however he mentions how "Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact". He capitalizes and personifies the word truth to imply great emphasis, suggesting how the truth can sometimes cause breaks in dreams; thus allowing reality to set in. The wonderful thing though is that no matter how much the truth tries to influence our lives, for Frost, simply thinking of birches can bring him to heaven. He later goes on to say, "Earth's the right place for love: I dont know where it's likely to go better". This is the reason he would want to come back at all, because for him there is no better place on Earth to love and be loved.
Other Poems by Robert Frost at: www.ketzle.com/frost/