Robert Frost. Does this poet's name ring a bell? Well, he is one of the top poets in the world! Frost was a man famous for contradictions, known as a cranky and egocentric personality – he once lit a wastebasket on fire on stage when the poet before him went on too long! I will be covering his background and historical context and will share with you 3 poems.
After researching and reading many of his poems, I felt that his works are extremely intruguing.
He was born in San Francisco on 26 March 1874, but he lived in California till he was 11 and then moved East — he grew up in cities in Massachusetts. Frost had deep US roots: his father was a descendant of a Devonshire Frost who sailed to New Hampshire in 1634. William Frost had been a teacher and then a journalist, was known as a drinker, a gambler and a harsh disciplinarian. He also dabbled in politics, for as long as his health allowed. He died of tuberculosis in 1885, when his son was 11.
In 1894 Frost sold his first poem, “My Butterfly,” to The New York Independent for $15.On the strength of this accomplishment, he asked Elinor Miriam White, his high school co-valedictorian, to marry him: she refused. She wanted to finish school before they married. Frost was sure that there was another man and made an excusrsion to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia. He came back later that year and asked Elinor again; this time she accepted. They married in December 1895.
Frost returned to the US in 1915, and by the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in North America, winning four Pulitzer Prizes (still a record). Upon his death in Boston on January 29, 1963, Robert Frost was buried in the Old Bennington Cemetery, in Bennington, Vermont. He said, “I don’t go to church, but I look in the window.”
Now, I'll share with you threee of his famed poems.
FIRE AND ICE
by: Robert Frost (1874-1963)
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 know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
HOUSE FEAR
by: Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Always--I tell you this they learned--
Always at night when they returned
To the lonely house from far away
To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,
They learned to rattle the lock and key
To give whatever might chance to be
Warning and time to be off in flight:
And preferring the out- to the in-door night,
They learned to leave the house-door wide
Until they had lit the lamp inside.
THE IMPULSE
by: Robert Frost (1874-1963)
It was too lonely for her there,
And too wild,
And since there were but two of them,
And no child,
And work was little in the house,
She was free,
And followed where he furrowed field,
Or felled tree.
She rested on a log and tossed
The fresh chips,
With a song only to herself
On her lips.
And once she went to break a bough
Of black alder.
She strayed so far she scarcely heard
When he called her--
And didn't answer--didn't speak--
Or return.
She stood, and then she ran and hid
In the fern.
He never found her, though he looked
Everywhere,
And he asked at her mother's house
Was she there.
Sudden and swift and light as that
The ties gave,
And he learned of finalities
Besides the grave.
Sources: poetry.about.com/od/20thcenturypoets/p/frost.htm
www.poetry-archive.com/f/frost_robert.html
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