3. Early Years
Robert Frost, circa 1910
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California, to journalist William Prescott Frost, Jr., and
Isabelle Moodie. His mother was of Scottish descent, and his father descended from Nicholas
Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on theWolfrana.
Frost's father was a teacher and later an editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin (which later
merged with the San Francisco Examiner), and an unsuccessful candidate for city tax collector.
After his death on May 5, 1885, the family moved across the country to Lawrence,
Massachusetts, 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. Frost's
mother joined the Swedenborgian church and had him baptized in it, but he left it as an adult.
Although known for his later association with rural life, Frost grew up in the city, and he published
his first poem in his high school's magazine. He attended Dartmouth College for two months,
long enough to be accepted into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. Frost returned home to teach
and to work at various jobs – including helping his mother teach her class of unruly boys,
delivering newspapers, and working in a factory as an arclight carbon filament changer. He did
not enjoy these jobs, feeling his true calling was poetry.
5. Adult Years
In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration
in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912,
after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that 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 and North of Boston, and his
reputation was established. By the nineteen-twenties, he was the most
celebrated poet in America, and with each new book—including New
Hampshire (1923), A Further Range(1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In
the Clearing (1962)—his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes)
increased.
6. Adult Years
Though his 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 a merely
regional or minor 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."
7. Adult Years
About Frost, President John F. Kennedy said, "He has
bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from
which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."
Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in
Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on
January 29, 1963.
8. The following phrase is from his poem ‗‘The road not
taken ‗‘…
‗Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one
less traveled by, And that has made all the difference‘
9. Bibliography (poems)
After Apple-Picking A Girl's Garden A Patch of Old Snow
Acquainted with the night Going for Water The Pasture
The Aim Was Song Good Hours Plowmen
An Old Man's Winter Night Good-bye, and Keep Cold A Prayer in Spring
The Armful The Gum-Gatherer Provide, Provide
Asking for Roses A Hundred Collars Putting in the Seed
The Bear Hannibal Quandary
Bereft The Hill Wife A Question (poem)
Birches Home Burial Reluctance
The Black Cottage Hyla Brook Revelation
Bond and Free In a Disused Graveyard The Road Not Taken
A Boundless Moment In a Poem The Road That Lost its Reason
A Brook in the City In Hardwood Groves The Rose Family
But Outer Space In Neglect Rose Pogonias
Choose Something Like a Star In White (Frost's Early Version of "Design") The Runaway
A Cliff Dwelling Into My Own The Secret Sits
The Code A Late Walk The Self-Seeker
Come In Leaves Compared with Flowers A Servant to Servants
A Considerable Speck The Lesson for Today The Silken Tent
The Cow in Apple-Time The Line-Gang A Soldier
The Death Of The Hired Man A Line-Storm Song The Sound of the Trees
Dedication The Lockless Door The Span of Life
The Demiurge's Laugh Love and a Question Spring Pools
Devotion Lure of the West The Star-Splitter
Departmental Meeting and Passing Stars
Desert Places Mending Wall Stopping by woods on a snowing evening
Design A Minor Bird Storm Fear
Directive The Mountain The Telephone
A Dream Pang Mowing They Were Welcome to Their Belief
Dust of Snow My Butterfly A Time to Talk
The Egg and the Machine My November Guest To E.T.
Evening in a Sugar Orchard The Need of Being Versed in Country Things To Earthward
The Exposed Nest Neither Out Far Nor in Deep To the Thawing Wind
The Fear Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same Tree at My Window
Fire and Ice (1920) Not to Keep The Trial by Existence
Fireflies in the Garden Nothing Gold Can Stay The Tuft of Flowers
The Flower Boat Now Close the Windows Two Look at Two
Flower-Gathering October Two Tramps in Mud Time
For Once, Then Something On a Tree Fallen across the Road The Vanishing Red
Fragmentary Blue On Looking up by Chance at the Constellations The Vantage Point
Gathering Leaves Once by the Pacific (1916) War Thoughts at Home
God's Garden One Step Backward Taken What Fifty Said
The Generations of Men Out, Out-- (1916) The Witch of Coös
Ghost House The Oven Bird The Wood-Pile
The Gift Oughtright Pan With Us
10. Bibliography (poetry collections)
North of Boston (David Nutt, 1914; Holt, 1914)
―Mendig Wall‖
A Boy's Will (Holt, 1915)
Mountain Interval (Holt, 1916)
―The Road Not Taken‘‘
Selected Poems (Holt, 1923)
Includes poems from first three volumes and the poem The Runaway New Hampshire (Holt, 1923; Grant Richards, 1924)
Several Short Poems (Holt, 1924)
Selected Poems (Holt, 1928)
West -Running Brook (Holt, 1928? 1929)
The Lovely Shall Be Choosers, The Poetry Quartos, printed and illustrated by Paul Johnston (Random House, 1929)
Collected Poems of Robert Frost (Holt, 1930; Longmans, Green, 1930)
The Lone Striker (Knopf, 1933)
Selected Poems: Third Edition (Holt, 1934)
Three Poems (Baker Library, Dartmouth College, (1935)
The Gold Hesperidee (Bibliophile Press, 1935)
From Snow to Snow (Holt, 1936)
A Further Range (Holt, 1936; Cape, 1937)
Collected Poems of Robert Frost (Holt, 1939; Longmans, Green, 1939)
A Witness Tree (Holt, 1942; Cape, 1943)
Come In, and Other Poems (1943)
Steeple Bush (Holt, 1947)
Complete Poems of Robert Frost, 1949 (Holt, 1949; Cape, 1951)
Hard Not To Be King (House of Books, 1951)
Aforesaid (Holt, 1954)
A Remembrance Collection of New Poems (Holt, 1959)
You Come Too (Holt, 1959; Bodley Head, 1964)
In the Clearing (Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1962)
The Poetry of Robert Frost (New York, 1969)
A Further Range (published as Further Range in 1926, as New Poems by Holt, 1936; Cape, 1937)
What Fifty Said
Fire And Ice
A Drumlin Woodchuck