Robert Frost

Born on the day of March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California, Robert Lee Frost was one of America’s most famous poets. Frost received four Pulitzer Prizes before he died in 1963. The first one in 1924 for New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes, then in1931 for Collected Poems, in 1937 for A Further Range, and the last on in 1943 for A Witness Tree. Married to Elinor Miriam White, who was his co-valedictorian at high school, he lived in various locations throughout his life, in San Francisco, California for the first ten years of his life, then moved to New England where he lived most of his years; he also lived in Great Britain for three years where he met Edward, T. E. Hulme and Ezra Pound. Pound would become the first American to write a review of Frost's work; it was also in England that Frost wrote some of his best work. Robert Frost attended Dartmouth College, where he stayed for a little over a semester, and also Harvard University for two years. He was awarded honorary Litt. D. from Harvard, Bates College, Oxford, Cambridge, National University of Ireland, and Amherst College, and was also the first to be awarded an LL.D. from Dartmouth College (Gerber Chronology). In Robert Frost’s poems, the main themes usually had to do with nature such as: death, evil, creation, design, choices in life, and responsabilities. This is seen in the poems “The Road not Taken,” “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Acquainted With the Night,” “Mending Wall,” “Gathering Leaves” and “Design.”

In “The Road not Taken,” (written in 1916) Frost uses a rhyme scheme of ABAAB. He describes a traveler, the speaker in the poem, who has come to a fork in the road, both literally and metaphorically. The speaker looks down both paths to help him make the choice of which one to take. The only thing he notices between the roads is that apparently one has been less traveled than the other because "it was grassy and wanted wear." He expresses a desire to know what is down both roads, but decides to use just one since he cannot be one traveler and walk two paths. He cheers himself with the possibility of returning one day to take the other road, but then doubts that he "should ever come back." In the next to last line, the speaker reveals which road he has taken, “the one less traveled by;" it was the grassy, unworn one he describes in the beginning. Then in the final line of the poem, he expresses how important his decision was, that his choice "has made all the difference” in his life.

“The Road not Taken” metaphorically suggests how difficult it is to make a decision in one’s life. If by any chance you would like to go back on your decision, going back to the beginning is not always easy or an option. “The choice confronting the speaker symbolizes all of life’s choices” (Brown 2). In this poem Frost also confuses the reader by making the roads about the same, meaning that choosing is more on impulse than on reasoning. This is shown when Frost writes that the roads are worn “about the same,” and that they were both “equally lay/In leaves no step has trodden black” (Brown 1). It is implied that both roads have been traveled about the same, therefore leading to the conclusion that Frost wants to have things both ways in this poem to show the importance of the path you choose.

Much like “The Road not Taken,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (written in 1923) is also about decision making and continuing on a road. Frost uses a rhyme scheme of AABA BBCB CCDC DDDD, the third line of each of the first three stanzas predicts the predominant rhyme of the next stanza. In this poem, the narrator is traveling along a country road where he sees a wooded area. He stops and gazes at the calm, snowy scene, simply to consider and appreciate its beauty. He praises the "easy wind and downy flake" and describes the woods as "lovely, dark and deep." By describing the woods with a combination of the words “lovely” and “dark,” Frost creates irony because how can something lovely be described as dark; darkness usally describes something evil and morose. Only his horse, who acts as if it were the speaker’s conscious, seems to have a problem with the unusual stop on the "darkest evening of the year." This phrase tells the reader the time of year it is; Frost is refering to the longest night of the year which is the Winter solstice. The speaker then realizes he cannot delay much longer because he has "promises to keep.” This shows that he has to make a decision to actually continue on his way and goes back to the theme of making decisions in life, between an attraction toward the woods and the pull of responsibility outside of the woods. By repeating the line "And miles to go before I sleep" the speaker is not implying that it is going to be a burden, but that the ride home will be a pleasant one.

The speaker can also be contemplating the attraction to danger, the unknown, the dark mystery behind the woods. These woods act like the boundary between civilization and the wild and the only thing tying him to the society is the horse which has been domesticated. Stopping at the woods would be uncivilized because no sane person would actually stop in the middle of a snowy night to gaze at some woods. The way the speaker is attracted to these woods almost sounds as if he is talking about death, they are restful seductive, lovely, dark, and deep; like a deep sleep. This brings the reader back to thinking of nature, part of nature is dying and reproducing.

In the poem “Mending Wall” (written in 1914) Frost goes back to a description of a rural landscape where two neighbors are building a wall. In this poem Frost does not use any type of end rhymes but it still has rhythm and simplicity. The poem gives the reader two point of views, one of the speaker who does not like the wall and says “something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” and the neighbor who believes “good fences make good neighbors.” A fence in a good location provides privacy and a sense of security for the homeowner. In the poem when Frost writes of the gaps in the wall, he means to tell the reader to read between what is actually written, to analyze and read between the lines. When the speaker of the poem talks about the “frozen ground swell” that is a metaphor for “frost”