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Turning in F.D.

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Credible vs Non-credible

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Primary vs, Secondary

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Q. What is the difference between primary and secondary sources? - Answers

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How do I cite information found within the text that is already cited by the author of the book I was reading?

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Research Outline

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style in prose or verse is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. Let the sound of Stevenson go through your mind empty and you will realize that he never took himself other than as an amusement.

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MLA Guide

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Robert Frost poems, quotations and biography on Robert Frost poet page. Robert Frost poetry page; read all poems by Robert Frost written.

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Frost's Poetry

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Robert Frost (1874-1963), four-time Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, teacher and lecturer wrote many popular and oft-quoted poems including "After Apple-Picking", "The Road Not Taken", "Home Burial" and "Mending Wall";

I let my neighbour 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 out-door 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 neighbours."

At times bittersweet, sometimes ironic, or simply marveling at his surroundings, one can also see autobiographical details in Frost's works; he suffered devastating losses in his life including the untimely deaths of his sister, two of his children and his wife. He knew the soul's depths of psychic despair but was also capable of delighting in birch trees 'loaded with ice a sunny winter morning'. While memorialising the rural landscape, vernacular, culture and people of New England in his traditional verse style, his poems also transcend the boundaries of time and place with metaphysical significance and modern exploration of human nature in all her beauty and contradictions. Though not without his critics, millions of readers the world over have found comfort and profound meaning in his poetry and he has influenced numerous other authors, poets, musicians, and playwrights into the 21st Century.

Robert Lee Frost (named after Southern General Robert E. Lee) was born on 26 March 1874 in San Francisco, California to Isabelle Moodie (1844-1900) teacher, and William Prescott Frost Jr. (1850-1885), teacher and journalist. San Francisco was a lively city full of citizens of Pioneering spirit, including Will who had ventured there from New Hampshire to seek his fortune as a journalist. He also started gambling and drinking, habits which left his family in dire financial straits when he died in 1885 after contracting tuberculosis. Honouring his last wishes to be buried in Lawrence, Massachusetts where he was born, Isabelle, Robert and his sister Jeanie Florence (1876-1929) made the long train journey across the country to the New England town. Isabelle took up teaching again to support her children.

With both parents as teachers, young Robert was early on exposed to the world of books and reading, studying such works as those by William Shakespeare and poets Robert Burns and William Wordsworth. He also formed a life-long love of nature, the great outdoors and rural countryside. After enrolling in Lawrence High School he was soon writing his own poems including "La Noche Triste" (1890) which was published in the school's paper. He excelled in many subjects including history, botany, Latin and Greek, and played football, graduating at the head of his class. In 1892 he entered Dartmouth, the Ivy League College in Hanover, New Hampshire, but soon became disenchanted with the atmosphere of campus life. He then took on a series of jobs including teaching and working in a mill, all the while continuing to write poetry.

Frost got his first break as a poet in 1894 when the New York magazine Independent published "My Butterfly: An Elegy" for a stipend of $15. A year later a wish he had had for some time came true; on 19 December 1895 he married Elinor Miriam White (1872-1938), his co-valedictorian and sweetheart from school. They had gone separate ways upon graduation to attend college, and while Frost had left early, Elinor wanted to wait until she was finished before getting married. They would have six children together; sons Elliott (b.1896-1900) and Carol (1902-1940) and daughters Lesley (b.1899), Irma (b.1903), Marjorie (b.1905-1934), and Elinor Bettina (1907-1907).

The newlyweds continued to teach, which Frost always enjoyed, but the demanding schedule interfered with his writing. In 1897 he entered Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, though illness caused him to leave in 1899 before finishing his degree. Despite that, it was one of many institutions that would award him an honorary degree later on. The next ten years, the 'Derry years', were trying times for Frost with a growing family to support. In 1900 they moved to a farm bought by his paternal grandfather in Derry, New Hampshire to try poultry farming. The same year his son Elliot died of cholera. Frost suffered greatly from grief and guilt, and compounding this was the loss of his mother to cancer the same year. In 1907 Elinor Bettina died just one day after birth. But the farm was a peaceful and secluded setting and Frost enjoyed farming, tending to his orchard trees, chickens and various other chores. This period inspired such poems as "The Mending Wall" (written in England in 1913) and "Hyla Brook" (1906). The house built in the typical New England clapboard style is now a restored State Historical Landmark.

But it was soon time for a change. In 1911 he sold the farm and the Frosts set sail for England. Elinor was enthusiastic about traveling, even with four children, and they moved into a cottage in Beaconsfield, just outside of London. Then finally it happened; after writing poetry and trying to get noticed by publishers for over twenty years, Frost's first collection of poetry A Boy's Will was published in England in 1913 by a small London printer, David Nutt. American publisher Henry Holt printed it in 1915. Frost's work was well-received and fellow poets Edward Thomas and Ezra Pound became friends, supporters, and helped promote his work. North of Boston (1914) followed. When World War I started the Frosts were back in New Hampshire, settling at their newly bought farm in Franconia in 1915. A year later Robert began teaching English at Amherst College. Mountain Interval was published in 1916 which contained many poems written at Franconia. He was also starting lecture tours for his ever-growing audience of avid readers.

In 1920, Frost bought 'Stone House' (now a museum) in South Shaftsbury, Vermont. There he wrote many of the poems contained in his fourth collection of poetry New Hampshire (1923) which won him the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. It includes "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening";

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.

While he also farmed on the idyllic property with its breathtaking views of mountains and valleys, another project Frost undertook was the founding of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College in Ripton, Vermont. After his son Carol married Lillian LaBatt (1905-1995) and his grandson Prescott arrived, he gave them Stone House to live in where Carol planted his thousand apple trees. Frost bought a second farm in Shaftsbury, "The Gulley". At the height of his career, his next collection of poems West-running Brook (1928) was published just one year before another great loss of a loved one hit him; his sister Jeanie died.

By now Frost was a popular speaker and had a demanding schedule of which Elinor, acting as his secretary, organised for him, so he spent a fair bit of time traveling, though still maintaining an impressive output of poetry. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry a second time in 1931 for his Collected Poems (1930), and also in 1937 for A Further Range (1936), and yet again in 1943 for his collection A Witness Tree (1942). All his children were married and he spent much time with them and his grandchildren, though it was not long before the heavy blows of loss struck again; his beloved daughter Marjorie died in 1934 after the birth of her first child, and in 1938 Elinor died of a heart attack. In 1940 Carol committed suicide.

Leaving the Stone House and The Gulley behind, in 1939 Frost bought the Homer Noble Farm in Ripton, Vermont for his summer residence, located near the Bread Loaf School. He occupied the cabin on the property 'Than smoke and mist who better could appraise, The kindred spirit of an inner haze?' ("A Cabin in the Clearing") while his friends and colleagues the Morrisons stayed in the main house. Collected Poems (1939) was followed by A Masque of Reason (play, 1945), Steeple Bush (1947), A Masque of Mercy (play, 1947), Complete Poems (1949), and In the Clearing (1962). At the Inauguration of American President John F. Kennedy on 20 January 1961, Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" (1942).

Robert Frost died on the 29th of January 1963 in Boston, Massachusetts. 'Safe!, Now let the night be dark for all of me. Let the night be too dark for me to see, Into the future. Let what will be, be.' ("Acceptance") He lies buried in the family plot in the Old Bennington Cemetery behind the Old First Congregational Church near Shaftsbury, Vermont. His gravestone reads 'I Had A Lover's Quarrel With The World'.

Just nine months after Frost's death, Kennedy gave a speech at Amherst College, singing Frosts' praises and speaking on the importance of the Arts in America. Later he said;

"The death of Robert Frost leaves a vacancy in the American spirit....His death impoverishes us all; but he has bequeathed his Nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."

Biography written by C.D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc 2006. All Rights Reserved.

The above biography is copyrighted. Do not republish it without permission.

Forum Discussions on Robert Frost

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Robert Frost (1874-1963), four-time Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, teacher and lecturer wrote many popular and oft-quoted poems including "After Apple-Picking", "The Road Not Taken", "Home Burial" and "Mending Wall"; I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;And on a day we meet to walk the lineAnd set the wall

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Robert Frost (1874-1963), four-time Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, teacher and lecturer wrote many popular and oft-quoted poems including "After Apple-Picking", "The Road Not Taken", "Home Burial" and "Mending Wall";

I let my neighbour 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 out-door 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 neighbours."

At times bittersweet, sometimes ironic, or simply marveling at his surroundings, one can also see autobiographical details in Frost's works; he suffered devastating losses in his life including the untimely deaths of his sister, two of his children and his wife. He knew the soul's depths of psychic despair but was also capable of delighting in birch trees 'loaded with ice a sunny winter morning'. While memorialising the rural landscape, vernacular, culture and people of New England in his traditional verse style, his poems also transcend the boundaries of time and place with metaphysical significance and modern exploration of human nature in all her beauty and contradictions. Though not without his critics, millions of readers the world over have found comfort and profound meaning in his poetry and he has influenced numerous other authors, poets, musicians, and playwrights into the 21st Century.

Robert Lee Frost (named after Southern General Robert E. Lee) was born on 26 March 1874 in San Francisco, California to Isabelle Moodie (1844-1900) teacher, and William Prescott Frost Jr. (1850-1885), teacher and journalist. San Francisco was a lively city full of citizens of Pioneering spirit, including Will who had ventured there from New Hampshire to seek his fortune as a journalist. He also started gambling and drinking, habits which left his family in dire financial straits when he died in 1885 after contracting tuberculosis. Honouring his last wishes to be buried in Lawrence, Massachusetts where he was born, Isabelle, Robert and his sister Jeanie Florence (1876-1929) made the long train journey across the country to the New England town. Isabelle took up teaching again to support her children.

With both parents as teachers, young Robert was early on exposed to the world of books and reading, studying such works as those by William Shakespeare and poets Robert Burns and William Wordsworth. He also formed a life-long love of nature, the great outdoors and rural countryside. After enrolling in Lawrence High School he was soon writing his own poems including "La Noche Triste" (1890) which was published in the school's paper. He excelled in many subjects including history, botany, Latin and Greek, and played football, graduating at the head of his class. In 1892 he entered Dartmouth, the Ivy League College in Hanover, New Hampshire, but soon became disenchanted with the atmosphere of campus life. He then took on a series of jobs including teaching and working in a mill, all the while continuing to write poetry.

Frost got his first break as a poet in 1894 when the New York magazine Independent published "My Butterfly: An Elegy" for a stipend of $15. A year later a wish he had had for some time came true; on 19 December 1895 he married Elinor Miriam White (1872-1938), his co-valedictorian and sweetheart from school. They had gone separate ways upon graduation to attend college, and while Frost had left early, Elinor wanted to wait until she was finished before getting married. They would have six children together; sons Elliott (b.1896-1900) and Carol (1902-1940) and daughters Lesley (b.1899), Irma (b.1903), Marjorie (b.1905-1934), and Elinor Bettina (1907-1907).

The newlyweds continued to teach, which Frost always enjoyed, but the demanding schedule interfered with his writing. In 1897 he entered Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, though illness caused him to leave in 1899 before finishing his degree. Despite that, it was one of many institutions that would award him an honorary degree later on. The next ten years, the 'Derry years', were trying times for Frost with a growing family to support. In 1900 they moved to a farm bought by his paternal grandfather in Derry, New Hampshire to try poultry farming. The same year his son Elliot died of cholera. Frost suffered greatly from grief and guilt, and compounding this was the loss of his mother to cancer the same year. In 1907 Elinor Bettina died just one day after birth. But the farm was a peaceful and secluded setting and Frost enjoyed farming, tending to his orchard trees, chickens and various other chores. This period inspired such poems as "The Mending Wall" (written in England in 1913) and "Hyla Brook" (1906). The house built in the typical New England clapboard style is now a restored State Historical Landmark.

But it was soon time for a change. In 1911 he sold the farm and the Frosts set sail for England. Elinor was enthusiastic about traveling, even with four children, and they moved into a cottage in Beaconsfield, just outside of London. Then finally it happened; after writing poetry and trying to get noticed by publishers for over twenty years, Frost's first collection of poetry A Boy's Will was published in England in 1913 by a small London printer, David Nutt. American publisher Henry Holt printed it in 1915. Frost's work was well-received and fellow poets Edward Thomas and Ezra Pound became friends, supporters, and helped promote his work. North of Boston (1914) followed. When World War I started the Frosts were back in New Hampshire, settling at their newly bought farm in Franconia in 1915. A year later Robert began teaching English at Amherst College. Mountain Interval was published in 1916 which contained many poems written at Franconia. He was also starting lecture tours for his ever-growing audience of avid readers.

In 1920, Frost bought 'Stone House' (now a museum) in South Shaftsbury, Vermont. There he wrote many of the poems contained in his fourth collection of poetry New Hampshire (1923) which won him the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. It includes "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening";

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.

While he also farmed on the idyllic property with its breathtaking views of mountains and valleys, another project Frost undertook was the founding of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College in Ripton, Vermont. After his son Carol married Lillian LaBatt (1905-1995) and his grandson Prescott arrived, he gave them Stone House to live in where Carol planted his thousand apple trees. Frost bought a second farm in Shaftsbury, "The Gulley". At the height of his career, his next collection of poems West-running Brook (1928) was published just one year before another great loss of a loved one hit him; his sister Jeanie died.

By now Frost was a popular speaker and had a demanding schedule of which Elinor, acting as his secretary, organised for him, so he spent a fair bit of time traveling, though still maintaining an impressive output of poetry. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry a second time in 1931 for his Collected Poems (1930), and also in 1937 for A Further Range (1936), and yet again in 1943 for his collection A Witness Tree (1942). All his children were married and he spent much time with them and his grandchildren, though it was not long before the heavy blows of loss struck again; his beloved daughter Marjorie died in 1934 after the birth of her first child, and in 1938 Elinor died of a heart attack. In 1940 Carol committed suicide.

Leaving the Stone House and The Gulley behind, in 1939 Frost bought the Homer Noble Farm in Ripton, Vermont for his summer residence, located near the Bread Loaf School. He occupied the cabin on the property 'Than smoke and mist who better could appraise, The kindred spirit of an inner haze?' ("A Cabin in the Clearing") while his friends and colleagues the Morrisons stayed in the main house. Collected Poems (1939) was followed by A Masque of Reason (play, 1945), Steeple Bush (1947), A Masque of Mercy (play, 1947), Complete Poems (1949), and In the Clearing (1962). At the Inauguration of American President John F. Kennedy on 20 January 1961, Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" (1942).

Robert Frost died on the 29th of January 1963 in Boston, Massachusetts. 'Safe!, Now let the night be dark for all of me. Let the night be too dark for me to see, Into the future. Let what will be, be.' ("Acceptance") He lies buried in the family plot in the Old Bennington Cemetery behind the Old First Congregational Church near Shaftsbury, Vermont. His gravestone reads 'I Had A Lover's Quarrel With The World'.

Just nine months after Frost's death, Kennedy gave a speech at Amherst College, singing Frosts' praises and speaking on the importance of the Arts in America. Later he said;

"The death of Robert Frost leaves a vacancy in the American spirit....His death impoverishes us all; but he has bequeathed his Nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."

Biography written by C.D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc 2006. All Rights Reserved.

The above biography is copyrighted. Do not republish it without permission.

Forum Discussions on Robert Frost

Recent Forum Posts on Robert Frost

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Robert Frost (1874-1963), four-time Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, teacher and lecturer wrote many popular and oft-quoted poems including "After Apple-Picking", "The Road Not Taken", "Home Burial" and "Mending Wall"; I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;And on a day we meet to walk the lineAnd set the wall

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Writing Folder

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Citation Rules

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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 poet 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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Robert Frost - One of the most celebrated figures in American poetry, Robert Frost was the author of numerous poetry collections, including including New Hampshire (Henry Holt and Company, 1923). Born in San Francisco in 1874, he lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont. He died in Boston in 1963.

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With the publication of "A Boy's Will" (1913) and "North to Boston" (1914) Frost became the first American poet to be widely read.

Frost has been regarded as a "regional poet". His region was New England of two best states in U.S.A. He never felt the slightest desire to include all America within the scope of his poetry. His regionalism resembles from Emily Dickinson's. The New England provides him with the stories, attitudes, characters, which are appropriate to his needs. He falls in love with the New England tradition and it gives him strength. His work seems to capture the vanished joys of apple picking, hay-making, the sleep of an old man alone in an old farmhouse, the cleaning of the pasture spring. No American writer knows the subjects, people and places as thoroughly as Frost does. Frost is certainly a realist. He never says too much. In stories, he uses suggestion and understatement.

Frost is chiefly lyrical. The poems are a spontaneous expression of the youthful heart. Frost shows emotion, imagery and song. As regards imagery, they are full of beauties of the darkness of late autumn, still depths of winter, and intensity of the swift summer. He has written lyrics light-hearted and humorous and philosophical. Often the two extremes are combines. He has written a few love lyrics too.

The form employed by Frost is dramatic. But in some of his most successful pieces he has subordinated both drama and character to straightforward poetic narrative. In "The Code" a farm hand tells how he killed the employer by burying him under a load of hay violating an unwritten law of the fields because of made some trivial sign on his work. Here Frost has sketched out, half-humorously a story showing peculiar local customs, the odd expressions of personal pride which develop in a remote rural community. In the "Witch of Coos" a humorously gruesome story of violence, brooding and hallucination appears what is probably the most unusual ghost in American literature. At once realistic and fantastic, cynically coarse and delicately beautiful, "Paul's Wife" is an amazingly successful fusion of the most disparate qualities.

Frost showed a philosophical bent of mind from the very beginning. He does not have any philosophical system or set of beliefs. He inclines to the inquiring manner. Often he expresses himself in a humorous or satirical vein and shows an epigrammatic gift.

Sometimes we have a blend of the familiar essays and the parable in Frost's philosophical poems with illustrative anecdotes. "Mending Walls" is a humorous portrayal through rural anecdote of the liberal, inquiring man confronted with the man of inertia. Then there are two poems of a different kind. "A Masque of Reason" and "A Masque of Mercy", in which the poet undertakes, if not Milton's task of justifying God's ways to men at least the more modest task of speculating about them.

Many of Frost's poems are capable of a symbolic interpretation. The surface meaning of "Mending Wall" is 'Good fences make good neighbours' but symbolically the poem states the serious problem of our times. Should national boundaries be made stronger for our protection or should they be removed since they restrict our progress towards international brotherhood? "The Mountain" symbolizes the un-inquisitive, the unadventurous and the un-ambitious spirit. "The Road Not Taken" symbolically deals with the choice problem.

Frost is not a Nature poet in the tradition of Wordsworth. He insists upon the boundaries between man and the forces of Nature. He sees no pervading spirit in the natural world and regards it as impersonal and unfeeling. He treats nature both as comfort and menace.

Frost shows a strong disinclination towards city life. He has written no poems on friendship. He has written love poems, but misunderstanding is a constant theme in them. His poetry has curious anti-social quality. Almost every poem in "North of Boston" deals with the theme of alienation. "Desert Places" describes a similar mood and situation. Many of his poems are about the sense and the feeling of loneliness not a peculiarly American dilemma but as a universal situation. Sometimes he approaches this problem in an optimistic manner as in "Our Hold on the Planet".

A critic has listed the typical qualities of Frost's poetry like Frost's tenderness, sadness and humour; his seriousness and honesty; his sorrowful acceptance of things as they are without exaggeration or explanation; his many poems with real people, real speech, real thoughts and real emotions; subtlety and exactness and a classical under-statement and restraint.

In conclusion it may be pointed out that Frost has been described as a symbolist, a spiritual drifter, a home-spun philosopher, a lyricist, a moralist, a preacher and a farmer who writes verse.

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Engliterarium: Robert Frost: Poetic Qualities

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With the publication of "A Boy's Will" (1913) and "North to Boston" (1914) Frost became the first American poet to be widely read. Frost has been regarded as a "regional poet". His region was New England of two best states in U.S.A. He never felt the slightest desire to include all America within the scope of his poetry.

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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,…

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Who Was Robert Frost?

Robert Frost was an American poet and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes. Famous works include "Fire and Ice," "Mending Wall," "Birches," "Out Out," "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and "Home Burial." His 1916 poem, "The Road Not Taken," is often read at graduation ceremonies across the United States. As a special guest at President John F. Kennedy 's inauguration, Frost became a poetic force and the unofficial "poet laureate" of the United States.

Frost spent his first 40 years as an unknown. He exploded on the scene after returning from England at the beginning of World War I. He died of complications from prostate surgery on January 29, 1963.

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Early Years

Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California. He spent the first 11 years of his life there, until his journalist father, William Prescott Frost Jr., died of tuberculosis.

Following his father's passing, Frost moved with his mother and sister, Jeanie, to the town of Lawrence, Massachusetts. They moved in with his grandparents, and Frost attended Lawrence High School.

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After high school, Frost attended Dartmouth College for several months, returning home to work a slew of unfulfilling jobs.

Beginning in 1897, Frost attended Harvard University but had to drop out after two years due to health concerns. He returned to Lawrence to join his wife.

In 1900, Frost moved with his wife and children to a farm in New Hampshire - property that Frost's grandfather had purchased for them-and they attempted to make a life on it for the next 12 years. Though it was a fruitful time for Frost's writing, it was a difficult period in his personal life, as two of his young children died.

During that time, Frost and Elinor attempted several endeavors, including poultry farming, all of which were fairly unsuccessful.

Despite such challenges, it was during this time that Frost acclimated himself to rural life. In fact, he grew to depict it quite well, and began setting many of his poems in the countryside.

Wife

Frost met his future love and wife, Elinor White, when they were both attending Lawrence High School. She was his co-valedictorian when they graduated in 1892.

In 1894, Frost proposed to White, who was attending St. Lawrence University, but she turned him down because she first wanted to finish school. Frost then decided to leave on a trip to Virginia, and when he returned, he proposed again. By then, White had graduated from college, and she accepted. They married on December 19, 1895.

White died in 1938. Diagnosed with cancer in 1937 and having undergone surgery, she also had had a long history of heart trouble, to which she ultimately succumbed.

Robert Frost's Children

Frost and White had six children together. Their first child, Elliot, was born in 1896. Daughter Lesley was born in 1899.

Elliot died of cholera in 1900. After his death, Elinor gave birth to four more children: son Carol (1902), who would commit suicide in 1940; Irma (1903), who later developed mental illness; Marjorie (1905), who died in her late 20s after giving birth; and Elinor (1907), who died just weeks after she was born.

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Robert Frost's Early Poetry

In 1894, Frost had his first poem, "My Butterfly: an Elegy," published in The Independent, a weekly literary journal based in New York City.

Two poems, "The Tuft of Flowers" and "The Trial by Existence," were published in 1906. He could not find any publishers who were willing to underwrite his other poems.

In 1912, Frost and Elinor decided to sell the farm in New Hampshire and move the family to England, where they hoped there would be more publishers willing to take a chance on new poets.

Within just a few months, Frost, now 38, found a publisher who would print his first book of poems, A Boy's Will, followed by North of Boston a year later.

It was at this time that Frost met fellow poets Ezra Pound and Edward Thomas, two men who would affect his life in significant ways. Pound and Thomas were the first to review his work in a favorable light, as well as provide significant encouragement. Frost credited Thomas's long walks over the English landscape as the inspiration for one of his most famous poems, "The Road Not Taken."

Apparently, Thomas's indecision and regret regarding what paths to take inspired Frost's work. The time Frost spent in England was one of the most significant periods in his life, but it was short-lived. Shortly after World War I broke out in August 1914, Frost and Elinor were forced to return to America.

Public Recognition for Frost's Poetry

When Frost arrived back in America, his reputation had preceded him, and he was well-received by the literary world. His new publisher, Henry Holt, who would remain with him for the rest of his life, had purchased all of the copies of North of Boston. In 1916, he published Frost's Mountain Interval, a collection of other works that he created while in England, including a tribute to Thomas.

Journals such as the Atlantic Monthly, who had turned Frost down when he submitted work earlier, now came calling. Frost famously sent the Atlantic the same poems that they had rejected before his stay in England.

In 1915, Frost and Elinor settled down on a farm that they purchased in Franconia, New Hampshire. There, Frost began a long career as a teacher at several colleges, reciting poetry to eager crowds and writing all the while.

He taught at Dartmouth and the University of Michigan at various times, but his most significant association was with Amherst College, where he taught steadily during the period from 1916 until his wife's death in 1938. The main library is now named in his honor.

For a period of more than 40 years beginning in 1921, Frost also spent almost every summer and fall at Middlebury College, teaching English on its campus in Ripton, Vermont.

In the late 1950s, Frost, along with Ernest Hemingway and T. S. Eliot, championed the release of his old acquaintance Ezra Pound, who was being held in a federal mental hospital for treason due to his involvement with fascists in Italy during World War II. Pound was released in 1958, after the indictments were dropped.

Robert Frost's Most Famous Poems

Some of Frost's most well-known poems include:

"The Road Not Taken"

"Birches"

"Fire and Ice"

"Mending Wall"

"Home Burial"

"The Death of the Hired Man"

"Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"

"Acquainted with the Night"

"Out, Out"

"Nothing Gold Can Stay"

Pulitzer Prizes and Awards

During his lifetime, Frost received more than 40 honorary degrees.

In 1924, Frost was awarded his first of four Pulitzer Prizes, for his book New Hampshire. He would subsequently win Pulitzers for Collected Poems (1931), A Further Range (1937) and A Witness Tree (1943).

In 1960, Congress awarded Frost the Congressional Gold Medal.

Photo: George Silk/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images

President John F. Kennedy's Inauguration

At the age of 86, Frost was honored when asked to write and recite a poem for President John F. Kennedy's 1961 inauguration. His sight now failing, he was not able to see the words in the sunlight and substituted the reading of one of his poems, "The Gift Outright," which he had committed to memory.

Soviet Union Tour

In 1962, Frost visited the Soviet Union on a goodwill tour. However, when he accidentally misrepresented a statement made by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev following their meeting, he unwittingly undid much of the good intended by his visit.

Robert Frost's Death

On January 29, 1963, Frost died from complications related to prostate surgery. He was survived by two of his daughters, Lesley and Irma. His ashes are interred in a family plot in Bennington, Vermont.

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Robert Frost was an American poet and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes. Famous works include "Fire and Ice," "Mending Wall," "Birches," "Out Out," "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and "Home Burial." His 1916 poem, "The Road Not Taken," is often read at graduation ceremonies across the United States.