Robert Lee Frost's personal life was full of grief and sadness. He had six children: Elliot, Lesley, Carol, Irma, Marjorie and Elinor Bettina. It might seem that he is blessed with many children, but most of his children died due to various reasons, only Lesley and Irma outlived their own father. Though his life was plagued with grief, he was famous due to his well-written poems, some of the bests works which were “After Apple-Picking”, “The Road Not Taken”, “Home Burial” and “Mending Wall”. It was highly unusual for a person whose life was filled with grief to be able to have written so many interesting poems, therefore it intrigued me to find more about Robert Frost. I would say that Robert Frost was a strong person, as he was able to be a successful poet although many unhappy events happened in his personal life. In the next few paragraphs, I will be writing about Robert Frost's background and historical content.
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California, United States on March 26, 1874 to William Prescott Frost (father, journalist and teacher) and Isabelle Moodie (mother, teacher). At early age, he was already exposed to the world of reading and books due to his parents' occupation as teachers, studying works of literature of famous poets and writers such as William Shakespeare and William Wordsworth.
Robert Frost's father William Frost gambled and drank, which left the family at a dire state in terms of financial state. In 5th of May1885, William Frost father died of contracting tuberculosis, leaving the family with only an outraging sum of $8. Isabelle, Robert and Robert's sister took a train to Lawrence, Massachusetts where William Frost was born, to honour William Frost's wish to be buried there. It was here he developed his liking of outdoors, nature and countryside. This eventually led to his realistic depictions of rural life in his poems, which he was often highly regarded for it. Many of his works employs rural life in New England to reflect complex social and philosophical themes.
Robert Frost enrolled in Lawrence High School, and after graduating got into Dartmouth College. He soon became bored with campus life, so he took a series of jobs, including teaching and working in a mill, in the mean time continuing to write poetry.
Robert Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became one of the major inspirations in his poetry. After marrying, he enrolled in Harvard University, but never got his degree due to illness.
He went to work in a farm with his family in Derry, New Hampshire, but he proved to unsuccessful in farming after 9 years of farming. He went back to the field of education, first teaching in Pinkerton Academy, then at New Hampshire Normal School.
He went to England in 1912, where he wrote one of his best poems. When World War I started, he went back to America and launched a career of poetry, teaching and lecturing.
These are some of his many poems:
"Out, Out—" by Robert Frost
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
A Line-storm Song by Robert Frost
The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.
The birds have less to say for themselves
In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
Wild, easily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.
There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast
The rain-fresh goldenrod.
Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea’s return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when after doubt
Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.
After Apple-Picking by Robert Frost
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
I have used other websites for reference for this posting. These are the list of websites:
