Picture: Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Well, reading a friend’s blog I came up with this idea to post a poem by my favorite poet, Robert Frost. He is my favorite poet for his marvelous gift for conveying great irony, philosophy, humor or provocative ideas through deft weaving of rather simple words. He was an Atheist but still he had warm humor towards the ideas of God. Here is one example:
”Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.”
Another thing that I love about him was his depiction of rural New England and its wilderness in his poems: woods, frosts, snows, storms, birches, farms and what not… All beautiful stuff. I have several of his poems as my favorites but here is just one, ”The Road not taken”:
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, 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.
i wrote a post about this poem some time ago and i wonder if the poem’s idea is about the last two lines or the title…
Thanks for your comment.I won’t deny that the last two lines are powerful. But the the poem as a whole is a masterpiece too!
Hello.
im in english 9 and i have recently read your fantastic poem. in fact we had to memorize it for a grade.
Hi there, I’m doing advanced Lvel Ebglish and I’m struggling on Robert Frost’s novel Dust of Snow, have you got any websites I can use on what it’s mainly about and the use of rhythm, rhyme and how language shows attitudes and values of the speaker etc.
Thanks you, I appreciate it. Robert
Hey Lauren, Thanks for the comment. Robert Frost’s poem is just great and I find many of his poems are easy to remember. Thanks for stopping by.
Robert- I have no idea what you’re talking about. To the best of my knowledge Robert Frost never wrote a novel. Wikipedia article does not mention any novel among the list of all his major and minor works. Amazon.com has no record of this novel you’re talking about. There is one title ”Dust of snow” published in 1981 by A.C. Snow. I never heard of it, if that’s the one you’re talking about ?
“The Road Not Taken” is one of my favorites too. But my ultimate favorite is “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Interesting article here: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/gold.htm
I remember when I was younger I had to read “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton. It was because of my attachment to that book that I really became an admirer of Robert Frost.
Nothing gold can stay.
Hmm… not sure why the last line of the poem ended up being the last sentence of my post… but anyway “Nothing gold can stay” comes after “So dawn goes down to day.” But I’m guessing you probably figured that out.
Anyway, sorry about that.
Robert Lee Frost one of my favorites – so nice to read your site. I’m sure to visit more often.
Take care