A Study of Robert Frost

33
A Study of Robert Frost
•
iI
begins as a lump in the
A poem
throat, a sense ofwrong, a home
It Finds
sickness, a love-sickness.
the thought and the thought Finds the
words.
.
—R()ttEtU FROST
Every poem is doubtlessly affected by the personal history of its composer,
but Robert Frost’s poems are especially known for their reflection of New
England life. Although the poems included in this chapter evoke the land
scapes of Frost’s life and work, the depth and range of those landscapes are
far more complicated than his popular reputation typically acknowledges.
He was an enormously private man and a much more subtle poet than
many of his readers have expected him to be. His poems warrant careful,
close readings. As you explore his poetry, you may find useful the Questions
1089
I
W90
A tudy of Robert Frost
for Writing about an Author in Depth (p.
your thinking about his life and work,
1082)
as a means ostimularing
A BIUEF BIOGKAPHY
Few poets have enjoyed the popular success that Robert Frost (1874.-1963)
achieved during his lifetime, and no twenneth-cenrury American poet has
had his or her work as widely read and honored. Frost is as much associ
ated with New Fngland as the stone walls that help define its landscape;
his reputation. however, transcends regional boundaries. Although he was
named poet laureate of Vermont only two years before his death, he was
for many years the nations unofficial poet laureate, Frost collected honors
the way some people pick up burrs on country walks. Among his awards
were four Pulitzer Prizes, the Bollingen Prize, a Congressional Medal, and
dozens of honorary degrees. Perhaps his most moving appearance was his
Robert Frost at age
eighteen (1892), the year
he graduated from high
school, “Education,”
Frost once said, “is the
ability to listen to almost
anything without losing
your temper or your selfconfidence.”
Courtesy of Rauner SpecaI
CoUect,ons Library, Dartmouth
College.
A BriefBiography
Robert Frost at age forty seven (1921) at Stone Cottage in Shaftsbury Vermont Frost wrote
would have written of me on my stone / I had a lover s quarrel with the world
Courtesy of Rauner Special Collecons Library Dartmouth College
I.09.L
1092.
A Study ofRobert Frost
Robert Frost at his writing desk in Franconia, New Hampshire, 915. ‘I have never started a
poem whose end I knew,” Frost said, “writIng a poem is discovering.”
Robert
Amherst College Arch,ves and 5pecaI toilea,ons Used by permIsson oFthe trustees oFA,,,herst tollege a, the
Lee Frost Copyright Trust.
recitation of “The Gift Outright” For millions of Americans at the inaugu
ration ofJohn F. Kennedy in [961.
Frost’s recognition as a poet is especially remarkable because his career
as a writer did not attract any significant attention until he was nearly forty
years old. He taught himself to write while he labored at odd jobs, taught
school, or farmed.
Frost’s early identity seems very remote from the New England soil.
Although his parents were descended from generations of New Englanders,
he was born in San Francisco and was named Robert Lee Frost after the
Confederate general. After his father died in 1885, his mother moved the
family back to Massachusetts to live with relatives. Frost graduated from
high school sharing valedictorian honors with the classmate who would
become his wife three years later. l3etween high school and marriage, he
attended Dartmouth College for a few months and then taught. His teach
ing prompted him to enroll at Harvard in 1897, but after less than two years
he withdrew without a degree (though Harvard would eventually award
him an honorary doctorate in 1937, four years after [)artmouth conferred
its honorary degree on him). For the next decade, Frost read and wrote
poems when he was not chicken farming or teaching. In 1912, he sold his
farm and moved his family to England, where he hoped to find the audi
ence that his poetry did not have in America.
A BriefBiography
Three yeai in Falglat. ci made i.e possible for Frost t.o return horm. as a.
r
Flu Iii sr uo s olurnt s oF pot try A Bov c Will (T9i) and North of l3octon
p0
(1914), were published in England. During the next twenty years, honors
and awards were conferred on collections such as Mountain Interval (1916)
Mw Hampshirr (1923), Writ Running Brook (1928) and A lurthu Rangr (1936)
These are the volumes on which most of Frost’s popular and critical repu
tation rests. Later collections include A Witness Tree (1942), A Masque of RcaAIa3quc of Mtro’ (1947) (omplete PoLrns
on (iq) Sttrpk Iluih (it4j
(1949) and In the (l uing (iqbz) In iddi non to publishing his ‘.‘-oi ks I rost
•••
endeared himself to audiences throughout the country by presenting his
poetry almost as conversations, He also taught at a number of schools, in
cluding Amherst College, the University of NI iehigan. Harvard University,
Dartmouth College, and Middlebury College.
Frosts countless poetry readings generated wide audiences eager to
claim him as their poet. The image he cultivated resembled closely what
the public likes to think a poet should be. Frost was seen as a lovable, wise
old man; his simple wisdom and cracker-barrel sayings appeared comfort
ing and homey. From this Yankee rustic, audiences learned that “There’s a
lot yet that isn’t understood” or “We love the things we love for what they
are” or “Good fences make good neighbors.”
In a sense, Frost packaged himself for public consumption. “I am..
my own salesman,” he said. When asked direct questions about the meanings
of his poems. he often winked or scratched his head to give the impression
that the customer was always right. To be sure, there is a simplicity in
Frost’s language, hut that simplicity does not Fully reflect the depth of the
man, the complexity of his themes, or the richness of his art.
The folksy optimist behind the public lectern did not reveal his pri
vate troubles to his audiences, although he did address those problems at
his writing desk. Frost suffered from professional jealousies, anger. and
depression. His family life was especially painful. Three of his Four children
died: a son at the age of four, a daughter in her late twenties from tubercu
losis, and another son by suicide. His marriage was filled with tension.
Although Frost’s work is landscaped with sunlight, snow, birches, birds,
blueberries, and squirrels. at is important to recognize that he was also inti
rnately “acquainted with the night,” a phrase that serves as the haunting
title of one of his poems (see p. 889).
As a corrective to Frost’s popular reputation, one critic, Lionel Trilling,
described the world Frost creates in his poems as a “terrifying universe,”
characterized by loneliness, anguish, frustration, doubts, disappointment,
and despair. To point this out is nor to annihilate the pleasantness and
even good-natured cheerfulness that can be enjoyed in Frost’s poetry, but
it is to say that Frost is not so one-dimensional as he is sometimes assumed
to be. Frost’s poetry requires readers who are alert and willing to penetrate
the simplicity of its language to see the elusive and ambiguous meanings
that lie below the surface.
1093
1094
A Study of Robert Frost
AN INTI&ODUCTION TO HIS WORK.
Frost’s treatment of nature helps to explain the various levels of meaning in
his poetry. The flimiliar natural world his poems evoke is sharply detailed. We
hear ic branches clicking against themselves, we see the snowwhite trunks of
birches, we tiel the smarting pain of a twig lashing across a face, The aspects
of the natural world Frost describes are designated to give pleasure, but they
are also frequently calculated to provoke thought. Flis use of nature tends to
be symbolic. Complex meanings are derived from simple facts, such as a spider
killing a moth or the difference between fire and ice (see “Design,” p. iii6,
and “Fire and Ice,” p. ma). Although Frost’s strategy is to talk about partic
ular events and individual experiences, his poems evoke universal issues.
Frost’s poetry has strong regional roots and is “versed in country
things,” but it Flourishes in any receptive imagination because, in the final
analysis, it is concerned with human beings. Frost’s New England landscapes
are the occasion rather than the ultimate focus of his poems. Like the rural
voices he creates in his poems, Frost typically approaches his themes indi
rectly. He explained the reason for this in a talk tided “Education by Poetry”:
l’oetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning
another. People say, “Why don’t you say what you mean?” We never do that, do
we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and
in indirections whether ui’om diffidence or some other instinct.
The result is that the settings, characters, and situations that make tip the
subject matter of Frost’s poems are vehicles for his perceptions about life,
In “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (p. 1112), for example, Frost
uses the kind of familiar New England details that constitute his poetry for
more than descriptive purposes. He shapes them into a meditation on the
tension we sometimes feel between life’s responsibilities and the “lovely,
dark, and deep” attraction that death offers. When the speaker’s horse “gives
his harness bells a shake,” we are reminded that we are confronting a univer
sal theme as vell as a quiet moment olnatural beauty.
Among the major concerns that appear in Frost’s poetry are the fragility
of life, the consequences of rejecting or accepting the conditions of one’s life,
the passion of inconsolable grief, the difficulty of sustaining intimacy, the
fear of loneliness and isolation, the inevitability of change, the tensions
between the individual and society, and the place of tradition and custom.
Whatever theme is encountered in a poem by Frost, a reader is likely to
agree with him that “the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering
something I didn’t know.” To achieve that fresh sense of discovery, Frost al
lowed himself to follow his instincts; his poetry
inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs
a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life not necessarily a
great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary
stay against confusion,
—
I-iost Jije I?otd Not iak’en
io9ç
This description from “On the Figure a Poem Makes” (see p. air8 for the
complete essay). Frost’s brief introduction to ( omplete Poems, may sound as
ii his poetry is kriuless and merely “lucky,” but his poems tend to be more
onvennonal [han experimental: “The at ist m me,” as 1w put the matter in
one of his poems, “cries out for design”
From Frost’s perspective, “free verse is like playing tennis with the net
down.’ He exercised his own freedom in meeting the challenges of rhyme
and meter. H is use of hxed forms such as couplets. tercets, quatrains. blank
verse, and sonnets was not slavish because he enjo/ed working them into
the natural Fnglish speech patterns especially the rhythms, idioms, and
tones of speakers living north of Boston that give voice to his themes,
Frost often liked to tise “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Fvening” as an
example of his graceful way of making conventions appear natural and
inevitable, He explored “the old ways to be new.’’
Frost’s eye for strong, telling details was matched by his ear for natural
speech rhythms. His flexible use of what he called “iambic and loose
iambic” enabled him to create moving lyric poems that reveal the personal
thoughts ofa speaker and dramatic poems that convincingl’ characterize
people caught in intense emotional situations. The language in his poems
appears to be little more than a transcription of casual and even rambling
speech, but it is in actuality Frost’s poetic creation, carefully crafted
to reveal the joys and sorrows that are woven into people’s daily lives.
What is missing from Frost’s poems is artificiality, not art. Consider
this poem.
—
The Road Not Taken
‘
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel 1)0th
And be one traveler, long 1 stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undei’growth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it ‘as 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,
1916
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A Study of Robert host
Moves to a firm in West Derry, New llampshire,
900
.19t2.
Mows to England. wb.es.ss he fa.rrr..s. and writes.
1913
A BoyS Wdi is published in i.on.ck.n.
,\orth gf Boston is published in London.
Movs to a latin near Franconia. New Hampshire.
Flected ro National Institute of Letters.
iqi6
iui
zo
leaches
at
Ainhersc College.
1919
Moves to South Shaftsbury, Vermont,
i92t—23
Teaches at the University of Mi.ch.igan.
1923
Selected Poems and New Hampshire are published; the latter
Pulitzer Prize.
iq8
Vect-Runn:ng Brook
io 10
Collected Poems
A Hrthcr Rancc
75
is
awarded a
published.
tiblished
is
published; teaches at Harvard.
1938
Wife dies.
1939-42
lcac.hes at Ksirvard,
194.2.
A Witaez. The, which is awarded a Pulitzer Prize, i.s published.
i94349
leaches at Dartmouth.
i04
A Masque of Reason is published.
1947
Steeple Bush and A Masque of Merty are published.
7919
(onzplete Poems (enlarged)
961
is
published.
Reads ‘The Gift Outrighf’ at President John F. Kennedy’s
inauguration.
193
Dies on January 29
Mowing
“
in Boston,
There was never a sound beside the wood but one.
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not vell myself;
Perhaps it was something about the hear of the sun.
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeblts’pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
1913
Frost/M’ Nor ‘ember Guest
1099
Ihe fact is the sweetest dream that labour knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR CRITICAL TwNKING AND WRiTING
Describe the rone of “Mowing.” How does reading the
aloud afhct your understanding of it?
2. I )iscuss the Image of the scythe. Do you think it has any symbolic value?
Explain why or why not.
Paraphrase the poem. What do you think its theme is?
Describe the type of sonnet lrost uses in “lowing.”
FIRST RESPONSE.
i.
poem
.
.
7
My November Guest
1913
My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days ofauwmn rain
Are beautiful as days can he;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure svill not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.
a
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eve for these.
And vexes me for reason why,
is
Nor yesterday I learned to know
F’he love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.
20
CoNsIDERATIoNs FOR CRITIcAL THINKING AND WRITING
i.
2.
.
of relationship
FIRST REsPONsE. I-low is “Sorrow” personihed? What sort
does the speaker have with her?
What kind of tone do the poem’s images create?
What do you think is this poem’s theme?
CoNNEcTioN TO ANoTHER SELEcTIoN
i.
Compare Frost’s treatment of November with Margaret Atwood’s evocation
of “February” (p. 876). Explain why you prefer one poem over the other.
1100
A Study ofRobert Frost
Storm Fear
1
1913
When the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts with snow
I’he lower chambt’r window on the east.
And whispers with a sort of stilled hark.
The beast-,
“Come out! Come out!”
It coSts no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Iwo and a child,
[hose of us not asleep subdued to mark
I low the cold creeps as the f-ire dies at length,
-
io
*
I low drifts are piled,
[)ooryard and road ungraded,
Till even the comforting barn grows far away,
And my heart owns a doubt
Whether ‘tis in us to arise with day
And save ourselves unaided.
15
CoNsIDERATIONs FOR CRErIcAL TrnNIUNG AND WRITING
I.
2.
.
What is the “inward struggle” (line 7) in this poem?
How is winter depicted by the speaker? What emotions does winter pro
duce in the speaker?
Describe the rhyme scheme and its effects on your reading the poem aloud.
FIRSTRESPONSE.
CoNNEcTIoN
i.
TO
ANoTI-i1R SILEcTioN
Compare the perspectives on nature in ‘Storm Fear” and in Emily I)ickin—
Sons “Presentiment is that long Shadow—— on the lawn
(p. 867). How
are i hey both poems about tear?
----
“
Mending Wall
V’
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.
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,
1914
ro
iioi
Irot Mending Will
at spring mendingtimc we find them there
I let mv 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 halls
\Ve have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay whete you are until our backs are turned!”
‘i wear our fingers rough with h indling them
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
ITo re ss hen it is sse do not need thc seal1
lie is all pine and I am apple orchard.
NI)’ apple trees cviii never get across
And eat the cones under his pines I nil him
1-Ic only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Spring is the inischiefin me, and I wonder
It I could put a notion in his head
Why do rhe make e,ood ne it,hhoi s lsn t it
\Vlmere there are cocvs But here there are no cows.
Before I built a ivall I’d ask to know
What I was svalling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is rhat doesn’t love a wall,
I could say Elves to him
[hit csints it down
Btit it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
lie said it tdr himself I see him there
Bringing a storn grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an oldsrone savage armed.
lie’ moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
lie will nor go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought ofit so well
I Ic says again tood fences make good neighbors
But
4c
CoNsIDERATIoNs FOR CRITIcAL THINKING AND WRmNG
What might the “Something” be that “doesn’t love a wall”
(line I)? Why does the speaker remind his neighbor each spring that the
ccall nceds to be repaired? Is it ironic that the speaker initiates the mending?
Is there anything good about the wall?
hbor differ in snsibilities1 What is suggstcd
5
Floec do the spcakcr and his nci
ibout thc ncighbor in lines 41 and 42?
The neighbor likes the saying “Good fences make good neighbors” so well
that he repeats it (lines 27, 45). Does the speaker also say something twice?
What else su5gests that the speaker s attitude toward the wall is not neces
sarily Frost’s?
FiRST RESPONSE.
2
.
noz
A Study ofRobert Frost
4. Although the speaker’s language is colloquial, what is poetic about the
sounds and rhythms he uses?
c. [‘his poem was hrst pnblished in i914; Frost read it to an audience when he
visited Russia in i62. Whit do liese facts suggest about ilw symbolic value
“Mending \VaII”?
C0NNEc’raoNs i’o OrTIER Sil.ecnoNs
How do you think i he neighbor in rhis poem would respond to l)ickin
son’s idea of imagination in li make a prairie it takes a clover and one
bee” (p. 1051)?
z. What similarities and differences does the neighbor have with ihe people
Frost describes in “Neither Our Far nor In Deep” (p. ii if)?
i.
“
home Burial
1914
“i’
I Ic saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fiar.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: ‘What is it you see
From tip there always for I want to know.”
She turned and sank upon her skirts at that.
And her face changed from terrified to dull.
He said to gain time: “What is it von see,”
Mounting until she cowered under him.
‘‘I will find out now von must tell me, (lear.”
She, in her place. refused him any help
With the least stifhning 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 murinuied, “(_)h,’ and again, “Oh.”
-
mu
-
“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.
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. \Ve haven’t to mind those,
so
accustomed
lrost/Hotnr’ Burial
no
But I understand: it is not the stones,
But the child’s mound
“Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.
She withdrew, shrinking from beneath his arm
That rested on he banister, and shd downstairs;
And turned on him with such a daunting look,
lie said rwiee over hefdrc he knew himself
in t i man spr ik of his own child he s lost?
Not you’ Oh srherc s my hat Oh I don r nerd
I must get out of here, I must get air.
I don’t know rightly whether any’ man can.’
is
it’
“Am! l)on ‘t go to someone else this time.
listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs.’
I Ic sit and fixed his chin bctssu.n his fists
s omething I should hke to ask you dear
“\ou don
t
know how
to
ask
-45
it.”
“Help me, then.”
1 Icr ringers moved tile latch h.r all reply.
Ms ssords ire ne uly thvivs an offtnse
I don t know hoss ro spuak ot 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 tip being a man
With svomen—fiulk. We could have some arrangement
B which I d bind myself to keep hands oti
\nything special you ii a mind to name
Though I don’t like such things ‘twixt those that love.
i\vo that don’t love can’t live together without them.
But two that do can’t live together with them.”
She moved the larch a little. “Don’t don’t go.
Don’t carry it to someone else this nme.
Idi me about it it it s something human
Let me into your grief. I’m not so much
Unlike other folks as our 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 rip 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
(5
—“
“There you go sneering now!”
70
“I’m
nor,
I’m
nor!
You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.
God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,
A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.”
1104
A Study ofRobert Frost
“You can’t because you don’t know how to speak.
If you had any felings, 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.”
“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
You couldn’t care! The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretense of following to the grave.
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.
But the world’s evil. I won’t have grief so
IfI can change it. Oh, I won’t, I won’t!”
oo
los
“There, you have said it all and you feel better.
You won’t go now. You’re crying. Close the door.
The heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up.
Amy! There’s someone coming down the road!”
“You oh, you think the talk is all. I must go
Somewhere out of this house, How can I make you—”
—
—
“If—you—do!” She was opening the doorwider.
“Where do you mean to go? First tell me that.
I’ll follow and bring you back by force. I will!—”
120
1r(,St Ihe ?iod-Pile
WRITING
CoNsIDERATIONS IOR CRITICAl. TnINKn’u; AND
d
I his poem tells a story of a relationship. Is the husban
wife. Has
insensitive and indifferent to his wife’s grief? Characterize the
other?
Frost invited us io sympathize wit Ii one character more ihan with the
w
windo
y
stairwa
ot
the
sight
within
2. How has the burial of the child
Is the chLld’s grave a
poem?
this
in
couple
the
of
ship
relanon
the
d
afl&re
symptom or a cause of the conflict between them?
g the iambic pentameter pattern in lines i8 and
3. What is the effect of splittin
7o and 71?
and
and 46,
19, 31 and 32,
sion of the poem? l)o you think thc
4 Is the conflui t n soked at the conclu
differences?
their
me
overco
will
wife
and
d
husban
I.
FIRST RESPONSE,
.
The WoodPile /
Out walking in the Cozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, “I will turn back from here.
No, I svill go on farther- and we shall see.”
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight tip and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I svas here
Or somewhere else: I was JUSt far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish a.s 1:0 think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather—
The white one in his tail; like one who rakes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled— and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year’s snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year’s cutting,
Or even last year’s or the year’s before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one sIde was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
1914
io
20
{
1106
,1 Study of Robert Frost
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
Un warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
to
CoNsIDERATIoNs FOR CRITICAL THINKING AND WRITING
1. FIRS’rRESPONsE. What symbolic value
of his discovery of the woodpile?
can you find in the speaker’s account
\X”rite a paraphrase of i he poem.
I-low does the small bird’ (line io) figure in the poem? Why do you think
it’s there? I low is it related to the woodpile?
4. Characterize the speaker’s tone. How does the rhythm of the poem’s lines
help to create the tone?
2.
.
CoNNec’rloNsTo OTHER SELEcTIoNs
i.
Write an essay comparing the speaker in this poem to the speaker in “Stop
ping by Woods on a Snowy hvening” (p. 1112). How, in each poem, do
simple activities reveal something important about the speaker?
2. Discuss the speakers’ sense of rime in “The Wood-Pile” and in “Nothing
C;old Can Stay” (p. in 3).
After Apple-Picking
/
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
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and 11cr it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And 1 could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
1914
to
20
Frost Birches
Jr keeps the pressure oJa ladder-round,
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
for I have had too much
Ofapplc-picking I am overrired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch.
Cherish in hand, lift down, and nor let fall.
For all
That struck the earth.
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see whar vi1l trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether its like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or jusr some human sleep.
i 107
40
CRITICAL THINKING AND WRITING
te Frost’s view that ‘Poetry
FIRST RRSPONSE. How does this poem illustra
thing and meaning an
one
sIying
of
way
sible
permis
one
provides the
tion of apple pick
descrip
d
detaile
other”? When do you hrst sense that the
way?
that
used
ing is being
in the
What comes after apple picking? What does the speaker worry about
dream beginning in line iS?
?
Why do you suppose Frost uses apples rather than, say, pears or squash
C0NsWERATI0Ns 0R
i.
2.
.
Birches /
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think sonic boy’s been swinging them.
But swangmg doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. 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,
1916
iio8
A Study of Robert &ost
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 nor 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 myselfa 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.
is
20
25
40
45
C0NsrnERATI0Ns FOR CRITIcAL THINKING AND WRrnNG
1.
2.
FIRST RESPONSI3. What do you think the swinging of birches symbolizes?
Why does the speaker in this poem prefer the birches to have been bent by
boys instead of ice storms?
&ost, un Old Man c Winter Night
described in the poem? Wlw does the speaker
choose it over ‘heaven” (line ¶6)?
wure writtuil in hi.
I low might thu Iteut of this poem be ch tn ed it it
versu?
couph ts instead of blank
section on reader-response strategies
CRITICAL STRATEGIES. Read the
ri ii. ‘oui
itt at(gii 5 for Ri. adini
ritkal
(
j
haprer
(pp 2o6o 62) in (
Hew does
s.
reading
careful
sive
response to this poem over three succes
lope
dust
oi
chinge
poum
thu
of
undurstandin
sour 5
3. How is ‘earth” (line
ç.
1109
52)
II
An Old Man’s Winter Night
V
\ll out of doors looked d irkly in it him
Chrough the thin frost almost in separatu stars
I hit gathurs on the pane in umptv rooms
\hat kupt his uyes from giving hiuk the giz
W is the limp tilti d ne ir them in Ins hind
What kept him from remumbet ing ss hat it s is
Iliat brought him to rhit uruaking room was age
He stood with barrels round him at a loss.
And having sciied the cellar under him
In clomping here, he scared it once again
In clomping off— and scired thu outer night
\Vhich has its sounds, familiar hkc the roar
Of trues and crick of bianchs common things
But nothing so liku bcanng on a box
A light lie wis to no onc but himstlf
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quict lu,ht and thin nor uven that
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roo
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
shifted
Once in thu stove disturbed him nd he
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man one man can’t keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It s thus he dous trot a wintur night
1916
4
S
to
j
is
4
2
—
3
ING AND WRITING
CONSIDERATIONS FOR CRITIcAL. THINK
i
2.
.
Describe the tone of this poem Which images are espe
night?
cially effective in evoking the old man, the winter, and
ental poem?
sentim
a
this
Is
man?
old
What emotions do you feel for the
do they
effects
What
poem.
Comment on the sounds described in the
FIRST SP0NSF
create
I
trio
A Study ofRobert Frost
CoNNectioNs o
OThER
Seeec’rioNs
Compare the speaker in ‘The Road Not Taken” (p. iofls) with the old man
in this poem. Are they essennally similar or different? Explain your response
in an essay.
I )i’o u’,s ml .& o ‘ nit I md nu hr in ‘\ i Old M m s \\ no r Nir lit md
‘Stopping 1
w Woods on ,m Snowy Evening” (p. ii
“Out, Out —“
“
1916
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove—length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont,
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
Ihar a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them “Supper” At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap
He must have given the hand. I lowever it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
11w boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh.
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
1-laif in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all
Since lie was old enough to know, big boy
l)omg a man’s work, though a child at heart —
lie saw all spoiled. “[)on’t let him cur my hand off-—
[‘he doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!”
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed, They listened at his heart.
Little—less nothing! — and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
—
—
“Oui Out
“.‘
From Act V, Scene v, of Shakespeares Macbeth.
20
nn
Frost/The Oven Bird
C0N5WERas-ioNs voi CRITIcAL THINKING AND WRmNG
This narriuvl po m is about the ict idenral dcath of s
is the purpose o he story? Some readers have argued
What
Vermont boy.
that the final lines reveal the speaker’s callousness and indif[irence. What
do you think?
How does lrost’s allusion to Macbeth contribute ro the meaning of this
poem? Does the speaker seem to agree with the view of life expressed in
FIRST R1’SPONSE
i
Macbeth’s lines?
Read th section on Mirxist criticism (pp 2053 54)
iticil
Str-itcs,ics for Rciding Ho do ou think a Mu \
in ( h pt
1st critic would interpret the fhmilv and evenrs described in this poem?
CRrnCALSTRATI
i
(
IRS
i
CoNNEcTIoNS TO OT11IR SELECrI0Ns
V( hat ire tlic similai itics snd difktcncrs in thernc bcrwccn this p0cm and
I rost s Norhini, (jold (an Stiv (p 1113)2
t iti iii rssa> ompirini. hos i,rit I is hindh d by thc boy s [umil in this
poem and by the couple in “Home Burial” (p. i io2).
with thost of Sri phin
( omp ire the ronc and thcmi of Out Out
897)
(p.
Universe”
the
to
Urine’s “A Man Said
i
The Oven Bird /
Thctc is i singir cveryonc his heard
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old md that for Flowcrs
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
lie says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a momi nt ovcrcmt
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
[-Ic says the highway dust is over all.
rh bird ssould c ast md he as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
Fhe question that he frames in all but words
Is shat to make of a diminished thing
1916
to
CoNsIDERATIoNs FOR CRITICAL ThINKING AND WRITING
I
2.
.
FIRST RESPONSE Wh-it kind of sonnct is this poem? What is the rulation
ship between the octave and the sestet?
The ovenbird is a warbler that makes its domed nest on the ground. What
kinds of observations does the speaker have it make about spring, summer,
and fall?
The final two lines invite symbolic readings. What do you make of them?
[
1112
A Study of Robert Frost
4.
Read the section on critical thinking (pp. 204F44> in
Chapter
“Critical Strategies tbr Reading,” and then research critical com
mentary on this poem. Write an essay describing the range oflnterpretations
that you find. Which interpretation do you think is the most convincing? Why?
CRITIcAL STRATEGIES,
,
Fire and Ice /
1923
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.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR CRmcAL THINKING AND WRITING
FIRST RESPONSE. What characteristics of human behavior does the speaker
associate with fire and ice?
2. What theories about the end of the world are alluded to in lines i and z?
3. How does the speaker’s use of understatement and thyme affect the tone
of this poem?
1,
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
7
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake,
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy Flake.
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.
1923
Frost/ Un harvested
CONSIoIRArloNs FOR
Citmc,si, THINKING
1H3
AND WRITING
What is the significance ot the setting in this poem? How
is tone conveyed by i he miges?
What does the speaker lind appealing about the woods? What is the pur
pose of the horse in the poem?
Although the last two lines are idenncal, they are not read at the same
speed. Why the dil’hrence? What is achieved by the repetition?
What is the poem’s rhyme scheme? What is the effect of the rhyme in the
final stanza?
FIRST RESPONSE.
I,
2,
.
.
C0NNEC’rToN TO ANoTI4ER StsI,EcTI0N
t.
\X’hat do von think Frosi might have to say about “A Parodic Interpretation of
‘Stopping by Woods on a Sno%y Evening’” by Herbert R. CuursenJr. (p. 1121)?
Nothing Gold Can Stay
/
1923
Natures hrst green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
The leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
CoNslomATIoNs FOR CRITICAL ThINKING AND WRmNG
I.
2.
What is meant by “gold” iii the poem? Why can’t
What do the leaf, humanity, and a day have in common?
FIRST RESPONSE.
it
“stay”?
CoNNEcTIoN TO ANOTHER SEucT1oN
i.
Write an essay comparing the tone and theme of “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
with those of Robert 1-lerrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” (p. 8ti).
Unharvested V
1936
A scent of ripeness from over a wall,
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased irselfofits summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady’s fan.
5
Study of Rnbcrt &ost
1114
For there there had been an apple fill
complete as the apple had given man.
rhe ground was one circle otsolid red.
As
May something go always un harvested I
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So srnellmg their sweetness would be no theft.
C0N5II)FR,vnoNs FOR CRiTIcAl.
Fi lINKING
AND WRITING
\Vhy does the speaker like the idea of some things going
tin harvest ed?
z. Fxpl.un why this poem is about more than just .mpples What lines espe
cially invite deeper readings?
. What kind oisonnet is tIns poem? I )iscuss the cilects created by frosts uSe
o[ meter and rhyme.
4. CRITIcAl. STRATEGIES. Read tIme section on mythological cntmcm.sm (pp.
How do you think
oç’ uo) in C Is sptcu c3 ( i tic il Stu -stcgmcs for Rt ding
a mythological critic would mrerpret “Un harvested’?
I,
FIRST RESPONSE.
CONNEc’rIoN TO ANOTt-IER SELEcTiON
i.
Compare the themes in this poem and in
Neither Out Far nor In Deep
“
“After
Apple-Picking” (.
i 06).
1936
T’he people along the sand
All turn and look one way,
They turn their hack on the land.
They look at the sea all day.
As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.
The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be
The water comes ashore.
And the people look at the sea.
They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch rhey keep?
K)
Frost ,V&’itht’r Out Fir nor Jo 13cc/i
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Manuscript page
for Robert Frosts
“Neither Out Far
nor In Deep’
(p. iii4), which was
hrst published in
The Yale Review n
934 artd later,
with a few punctu
ation
changes, in
A Further Range
1936,
permission ,,t the
Amherst College Arc hives dad Spec! al Collect,c,ns Used by
College at the Robert 1_cc Frost Copyrgbt rrusr.
FriistCes of
Amherst
WRITING
C0NsIDFRATI0Ns FOR CRITICAL ThINKING AND
I.
2.
Frost built thu poem around a simple observation that
ns. Why do people at the beach almost always face the
questio
some
raises
ocean?
ocean? What feelings and thoughts are evoked by looking at the
sses.
progre
poem
the
as
g
Notice how the verb look takes on added meanin
for?
g
lookin
What are the people
FIRST R1SPONSF.
in
A tud (,( Robert Frost
nj6
I-low does the hnal stanza extend the poem’s significance?
the speaker identity with the people described, or dot’s he ironically
Does
1
distance himself from them?
.
Design /
1936
I tound a dimpled spider, 1-it and white,
On a white heal-all,” holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right.
Like the ingredients ofa wtches’ broth
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had the flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
‘rhen steered the white moth thither in the night?
What hut design of darkness to appall?---If design govern in a thing so small,
2
io
Isaiah: A common Ilowei’, usually blue, once used for medicinal purposes.
C0NswFRATI0NS FOR CRmcAL ThINKING AND WRITING
What kinds of speculations are raised in the poem’s final
two lines? Consider the meamng of the title, Is there more than one way to
read it?
a. How does the division of the octave and sestet in this sonnet serve to orga
the speaker’s thoughts and feelings? What is the predominant rhyme?
How does that rhyme relate to the poem’s meaning?
Which words seem especially rich in connotative meanings? Explain how
they function in the sonnet.
i.
FIRST RESPONSE.
.
CONNECTIONS TO OTHER SELEcrI0N5
i.
Compare the ironic tone of “Design” with the tone of William Hathaway’s
“Oh, Oh” (p. 748). What would you have to change in Hathaway’s poem to
make it more like Frost’s?
a. In an essay discuss Frost’s view of God in this poem and Dickinson’s per
spective in “I know that He exists” (p. [084).
Compare “Design’ with “In White,” Frost’s early version ofit (following).
.