Today’s featured poet has been called “America’s Poet Laureate.” In an overcast morning in 20, January, 1961, Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) stood next to the newly elected President, John F. Kennedy and delivered the following lines:
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, Still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely; realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
At the age of 86 years, when he read this poem at Kennedy’s Inauguration, Robert Frost was already well-established as a reknown poet and playwright; he is one of America’s brightest literary star.
Frost was born in San Francisco, California. Frost’s father was a journalist, William Prescott Frost, Jr. His mother, Isabelle Moodie, was of Scottish descent. After his father's death in May 5, 1885, Frost’s family moved across-country to Lawrence, Massachusetts. There, they lived under the patronage of Robert's grandfather, William Frost, Sr., who was an overseer at a New England mill. Frost graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892.
From the beginning, Frost’s work showed the unmistakable stamp of the great British literary tradition – Milton, Spenser, Keats, Shelley and Browning. Frost’s poetry harked back to an earlier time; he often remarked that he was content with “old ways to be new.”
Frost is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed themes from the early 1900s rural life in New England, using the setting to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.
Perhaps Frost’s best known poem is "The Road Not Taken.” This is the one poem that nearly all high school students memorize line by line. It is easy to see the appeal of this poem, especially to young people who see in the poem’s title and last line, an appeal to the rugged individualist.
Most readers often read the poem literally, as an expression of individualism. Literary critics, however, typically view the poem as ironic. According to Katherine Kearns, a Frost critic, “The Road Not Taken” is the most famous example of Frost's own claims to conscious irony and “the best example in all of American poetry of a wolf in sheep's clothing." Frost himself warned "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem – very tricky."
The poem's last lines, where the narrator declares that taking the road "less traveled by" has "made all the difference," can be seen as a declaration of the importance of independence and personal freedom.
The ironic interpretation is that the poem is about regret and rationalizing our decisions.
In this interpretation, the final two lines of the poem…
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
…are ironic – the choice made little or no difference at all, the speaker's protestations to the contrary. The speaker admits in the second and third stanzas that both paths may be equally worn and equally leaf-covered, and it is only in his future recollection that he will call one road "less traveled by.”
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was 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.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Another of Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall,” is perhaps best known for its last line spoken by the neighbor: "Good fences make good neighbors." The poem's narrator displays a disdain for that expression and the walls erected between people - yet he also shows a grudging acceptance, perhaps sadly, of the line's truth in its application to human relationships.
MENDING WALL
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,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
The last poem that I will discuss, “Acquainted with the Night,” is Frost’s most personally haunting poems. This poem is widely regarded as the poet’s admission of having experienced depression and a vivid description of what that experience feels like. In this poem, "the night" is a metaphor for depression itself, and the poet describes how he views the world around him in this state of mind. As he aimlessly roams the city streets, he brags about walking back and forth in the rain and of having "outwalked the furthest city light" to remain in darkness.
ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Thank you for joining me on this journey through the poetry of America’s Poet Laureate. I hope you enjoy his poetry as much as I do.
Have a wonderful weekend.
