essay on robert frost in 100 words

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Essay, Biography or Paragraph on “Robert Frost” great author complete biography for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Robert Frost

(1874 – 1963)

Robert Frost was one of the finest of rural New England’s 20th century pastoral poets. Frost published his first books in Great Britain in the 1910s, but he soon became in his own country the most read and constantly anthologised poet. Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times. He was born in San Francisco, California on March 26, 1874. His father, a journalist and local politician, died when Frost was eleven years old. His Scottish mother resumed her career as a schoolteacher to support her family. The family hired in Lawrence, Massachusetts, with Frost’s paternal grandfather. In 1892 Frost graduated from a high-school and attended Dartmouth College for a few months. Over the next ten years he held a number of jobs. In 1 dent published Frost’s poem My Butte the New York Independent he had five poems privately printed. In 1895 he married a former schoolmate, Elinor White. Frost worked as a teacher and continued to write and publish his poems in magazines. From 1897 to 1899 Frost studied t Harvard, but left without receiving, a degree. He moved to Derry, New Hampshire, working there as a cobbler, farmer, and teacher at Pinkerton Academy and at the state normal school, in Plymouth.

In 1912 Frost published his first collection of poems, A Bay’s Will (1913) followed by North Boston (1914) , which gained international  reputation. The collection contains some of Frosts best known poems: Mending Wall, The Death of the Hired Man, Home Burial, After Apple-Picking, and The Mod-Pile. He taught later at Amherst’ College (1916-38) and Michigan universities. In 1916 Frost was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In the same year appeared his third collection of verse, Mountain Interval. His wife died in 1938 and he lost four of his children. Frost also suffered from depression and continual self-doubt. After the death of his wife, Frost became strongly attracted to Kay Morrison, whom he employed as his secretary and adviser. Frost composed for her one of his finest love. poems, A Witness Tree. Frost participated in the inauguration of President John Kennedy in 1961 by reciting two of his poems. He travelled in 1962 to Soviet Union as a member .of a goodwill group. Over the years he received a remarkable number of literary and academic honours.

At the time of his death on January 29, 1963, Frost was regarded as a kind of unofficial poet laureate of the United States.

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Robert Frost

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• Table Of Contents

When was Robert Frost born, and when did he die?

Robert Frost was born in 1874, and he died in 1963 at the age of 88.

Who were Robert Frost’s children, and when did they live?

Elliott was born in 1896 and died of cholera in 1900. Lesley lived 1899–1983. Carol was born in 1902 and committed suicide in 1940. Irma lived 1903–67. Marjorie was born in 1905 and died from childbirth in 1934. Elinor was born in 1907 and lived only three days.

What was Robert Frost known for?

Robert Frost was known for his depictions of rural New England life, his grasp of colloquial speech, and his poetry about ordinary people in everyday situations.

What were Robert Frost’s most famous poems?

Robert Frost’s most famous poems included “The Gift Outright,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Birches,” “Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Taken,” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Robert Frost (born March 26, 1874, San Francisco, California , U.S.—died January 29, 1963, Boston, Massachusetts) was an American poet who was much admired for his depictions of the rural life of New England , his command of American colloquial speech, and his realistic verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations.

Frost’s father, William Prescott Frost, Jr., was a journalist with ambitions of establishing a career in California, and in 1873 he and his wife moved to San Francisco . Her husband’s untimely death from tuberculosis in 1885 prompted Isabelle Moodie Frost to take her two children, Robert and Jeanie, to Lawrence , Massachusetts , where they were taken in by the children’s paternal grandparents. While their mother taught at a variety of schools in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Robert and Jeanie grew up in Lawrence, and Robert graduated from high school in 1892. A top student in his class, he shared valedictorian honours with Elinor White, with whom he had already fallen in love.

Robert and Elinor shared a deep interest in poetry , but their continued education sent Robert to Dartmouth College and Elinor to St. Lawrence University. Meanwhile, Robert continued to labour on the poetic career he had begun in a small way during high school; he first achieved professional publication in 1894 when The Independent , a weekly literary journal, printed his poem “My Butterfly: An Elegy.” Impatient with academic routine, Frost left Dartmouth after less than a year. He and Elinor married in 1895 but found life difficult, and the young poet supported them by teaching school and farming, neither with notable success. During the next dozen years, six children were born, two of whom died early, leaving a family of one son and three daughters. Frost resumed his college education at Harvard University in 1897 but left after two years’ study there. From 1900 to 1909 the family raised poultry on a farm near Derry , New Hampshire, and for a time Frost also taught at the Pinkerton Academy in Derry. Frost became an enthusiastic botanist and acquired his poetic persona of a New England rural sage during the years he and his family spent at Derry. All this while he was writing poems, but publishing outlets showed little interest in them.

By 1911 Frost was fighting against discouragement. Poetry had always been considered a young person’s game, but Frost, who was nearly 40 years old, had not published a single book of poems and had seen just a handful appear in magazines. In 1911 ownership of the Derry farm passed to Frost. A momentous decision was made: to sell the farm and use the proceeds to make a radical new start in London, where publishers were perceived to be more receptive to new talent. Accordingly, in August 1912 the Frost family sailed across the Atlantic to England . Frost carried with him sheaves of verses he had written but not gotten into print. English publishers in London did indeed prove more receptive to innovative verse, and, through his own vigorous efforts and those of the expatriate American poet Ezra Pound , Frost within a year had published A Boy’s Will (1913). From this first book, such poems as “Storm Fear,” “The Tuft of Flowers,” and “Mowing” became standard anthology pieces.

A Boy’s Will was followed in 1914 by a second collection, North of Boston , that introduced some of the most popular poems in all of Frost’s work, among them “Mending Wall,” “The Death of the Hired Man,” “Home Burial,” and “After Apple-Picking.” In London, Frost’s name was frequently mentioned by those who followed the course of modern literature , and soon American visitors were returning home with news of this unknown poet who was causing a sensation abroad. The Boston poet Amy Lowell traveled to England in 1914, and in the bookstores there she encountered Frost’s work. Taking his books home to America, Lowell then began a campaign to locate an American publisher for them, meanwhile writing her own laudatory review of North of Boston .

Without his being fully aware of it, Frost was on his way to fame. The outbreak of World War I brought the Frosts back to the United States in 1915. By then Amy Lowell’s review had already appeared in The New Republic , and writers and publishers throughout the Northeast were aware that a writer of unusual abilities stood in their midst. The American publishing house of Henry Holt had brought out its edition of North of Boston in 1914. It became a best-seller, and, by the time the Frost family landed in Boston , Holt was adding the American edition of A Boy’s Will . Frost soon found himself besieged by magazines seeking to publish his poems. Never before had an American poet achieved such rapid fame after such a disheartening delay. From this moment his career rose on an ascending curve.

Frost bought a small farm at Franconia, New Hampshire, in 1915, but his income from both poetry and farming proved inadequate to support his family, and so he lectured and taught part-time at Amherst College and at the University of Michigan from 1916 to 1938. Any remaining doubt about his poetic abilities was dispelled by the collection Mountain Interval (1916), which continued the high level established by his first books. His reputation was further enhanced by New Hampshire (1923), which received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. That prize was also awarded to Frost’s Collected Poems (1930) and to the collections A Further Range (1936) and A Witness Tree (1942). His other poetry volumes include West-Running Brook (1928), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962). Frost served as a poet-in-residence at Harvard (1939–43), Dartmouth (1943–49), and Amherst College (1949–63), and in his old age he gathered honours and awards from every quarter. He was the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (1958–59; the post was later styled poet laureate consultant in poetry), and his recital of his poem “The Gift Outright” at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 was a memorable occasion .

Poems & Poets

Robert Frost

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, but his family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1884 following his father’s death. The move was actually a return, for Frost’s ancestors were originally New Englanders, and Frost became famous for his poetry’s engagement with New England locales, identities, and themes. Frost graduated from Lawrence High School, in 1892, as class poet (he also shared the honor of co-valedictorian with his wife-to-be Elinor White), and two years later, the New York Independent accepted his poem entitled “My Butterfly,” launching his status as a professional poet with a check for $15.00. Frost's first book was published around the age of 40, but he would go on to win a record four Pulitzer Prizes and become the most famous poet of his time, before his death at the age of 88.   To celebrate his first publication, Frost had a book of six poems privately printed; two copies of Twilight were made—one for himself and one for his fiancee. Over the next eight years, however, he succeeded in having only 13 more poems published. During this time, Frost sporadically attended Dartmouth and Harvard and earned a living teaching school and, later, working a farm in Derry, New Hampshire. But in 1912, discouraged by American magazines’ constant rejection of his work, he took his family to England, where he found more professional success. Continuing to write about New England, he had two books published, A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914) , which established his reputation so that his return to the United States in 1915 was as a celebrated literary figure. Holt put out an American edition of North of Boston in 1915 , and periodicals that had once scorned his work now sought it.    Frost’s position in American letters was cemented with the publication of North of Boston, and in the years before his death he came to be considered the unofficial poet laureate of the United States. On his 75th birthday, the US Senate passed a resolution in his honor which said, “His poems have helped to guide American thought and humor and wisdom, setting forth to our minds a reliable representation of ourselves and of all men.” In 1955, the State of Vermont named a mountain after him in Ripton, the town of his legal residence; and at the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961, Frost was given the unprecedented honor of being asked to read a poem. Frost wrote a poem called “Dedication” for the occasion, but could not read it given the day’s harsh sunlight. He instead recited “The Gift Outright,” which Kennedy had originally asked him to read, with a revised, more forward-looking, last line.   Though Frost allied himself with no literary school or movement, the imagists helped at the start to promote his American reputation. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse published his work before others began to clamor for it. It also published a review by Ezra Pound of the British edition of A Boy’s Will, which Pound said “has the tang of the New Hampshire woods, and it has just this utter sincerity. It is not post-Miltonic or post-Swinburnian or post Kiplonian. This man has the good sense to speak naturally and to paint the thing, the thing as he sees it.” Amy Lowell reviewed North of Boston in the New Republic, and she, too, sang Frost’s praises: “He writes in classic metres in a way to set the teeth of all the poets of the older schools on edge; and he writes in classic metres, and uses inversions and cliches whenever he pleases, those devices so abhorred by the newest generation. He goes his own way, regardless of anyone else’s rules, and the result is a book of unusual power and sincerity.” In these first two volumes, Frost introduced not only his affection for New England themes and his unique blend of traditional meters and colloquialism, but also his use of dramatic monologues and dialogues. “ Mending Wall ,” the leading poem in North of Boston, describes the friendly argument between the speaker and his neighbor as they walk along their common wall replacing fallen stones; their differing attitudes toward “boundaries” offer symbolic significance typical of the poems in these early collections.    Mountain Interval marked Frost’s turn to another kind of poem, a brief meditation sparked by an object, person or event. Like the monologues and dialogues, these short pieces have a dramatic quality. “Birches,” discussed above, is an example, as is “ The Road Not Taken ,” in which a fork in a woodland path transcends the specific. The distinction of this volume, the Boston Transcript said, “is that Mr. Frost takes the lyricism of A Boy’s Will and plays a deeper music and gives a more intricate variety of experience.”    Several new qualities emerged in Frost’s work with the appearance of New Hampshire (1923) , particularly a new self-consciousness and willingness to speak of himself and his art. The volume, for which Frost won his first Pulitzer Prize, “pretends to be nothing but a long poem with notes and grace notes,” as Louis Untermeyer described it. The title poem, approximately fourteen pages long, is a “rambling tribute” to Frost’s favorite state and “is starred and dotted with scientific numerals in the manner of the most profound treatise.” Thus, a footnote at the end of a line of poetry will refer the reader to another poem seemingly inserted to merely reinforce the text of “New Hampshire.” Some of these poems are in the form of epigrams, which appear for the first time in Frost’s work. “ Fire and Ice ,” for example, one of the better known epigrams, speculates on the means by which the world will end. Frost’s most famous and, according to J. McBride Dabbs, most perfect lyric, “ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening ,” is also included in this collection; conveying “the insistent whisper of death at the heart of life,” the poem portrays a speaker who stops his sleigh in the midst of a snowy woods only to be called from the inviting gloom by the recollection of practical duties. Frost himself said of this poem that it is the kind he’d like to print on one page followed with “forty pages of footnotes.”  West-Running Brook (1928) , Frost’s fifth book of poems, is divided into six sections, one of which is taken up entirely by the title poem. This poem refers to a brook which perversely flows west instead of east to the Atlantic like all other brooks. A comparison is set up between the brook and the poem’s speaker who trusts himself to go by “contraries”; further rebellious elements exemplified by the brook give expression to an eccentric individualism, Frost’s stoic theme of resistance and self-realization. Reviewing the collection in the New York Herald Tribune, Babette Deutsch wrote: “The courage that is bred by a dark sense of Fate, the tenderness that broods over mankind in all its blindness and absurdity, the vision that comes to rest as fully on kitchen smoke and lapsing snow as on mountains and stars—these are his, and in his seemingly casual poetry, he quietly makes them ours.”    A Further Range (1936) , which earned Frost another Pulitzer Prize and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, contains two groups of poems subtitled “Taken Doubly” and “Taken Singly.” In the first, and more interesting, of these groups, the poems are somewhat didactic, though there are humorous and satiric pieces as well. Included here is “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” which opens with the story of two itinerant lumbermen who offer to cut the speaker’s wood for pay; the poem then develops into a sermon on the relationship between work and play, vocation and avocation, preaching the necessity to unite them. Of the entire volume, William Rose Benét wrote, “It is better worth reading than nine-tenths of the books that will come your way this year. In a time when all kinds of insanity are assailing the nations it is good to listen to this quiet humor, even about a hen, a hornet, or Square Matthew. ... And if anybody should ask me why I still believe in my land, I have only to put this book in his hand and answer, ‘Well-here is a man of my country.’” Most critics acknowledge that Frost’s poetry in the 1940s and '50s grew more and more abstract, cryptic, and even sententious, so it is generally on the basis of his earlier work that he is judged. His politics and religious faith, hitherto informed by skepticism and local color, became more and more the guiding principles of his work. He had been, as Randall Jarrell points out, “a very odd and very radical radical when young” yet became “sometimes callously and unimaginatively conservative” in his old age. He had become a public figure, and in the years before his death, much of his poetry was written from this stance.    Reviewing A Witness Tree (1942) in Books, Wilbert Snow noted a few poems “which have a right to stand with the best things he has written”: “Come In,” “The Silken Tent,” and “Carpe Diem” especially. Yet Snow went on: “Some of the poems here are little more than rhymed fancies; others lack the bullet-like unity of structure to be found in North of Boston. ” On the other hand, Stephen Vincent Benet felt that Frost had “never written any better poems than some of those in this book.” Similarly, critics were let down by In the Clearing (1962) . One wrote, “Although this reviewer considers Robert Frost to be the foremost contemporary U.S. poet, he regretfully must state that most of the poems in this new volume are disappointing. ... [They] often are closer to jingles than to the memorable poetry we associate with his name.” Another maintained that “the bulk of the book consists of poems of ‘philosophic talk.’ Whether you like them or not depends mostly on whether you share the ‘philosophy.’”    Indeed, many readers do share Frost’s philosophy, and still others who do not nevertheless continue to find delight and significance in his large body of poetry. In October, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech at the dedication of the Robert Frost Library in Amherst, Massachusetts. “In honoring Robert Frost,” the President said, “we therefore can pay honor to the deepest source of our national strength. That strength takes many forms and the most obvious forms are not always the most significant. ... Our national strength matters; but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost.” The poet would probably have been pleased by such recognition, for he had said once, in an interview with Harvey Breit: “One thing I care about, and wish young people could care about, is taking poetry as the first form of understanding. If poetry isn’t understanding all, the whole world, then it isn’t worth anything.”    Frost’s poetry is revered to this day. When a previously unknown poem by Frost titled “War Thoughts at Home,” was discovered and dated to 1918, it was subsequently published in the Fall 2006 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review. The first edition Frost’s Notebooks were published in 2009, and thousands of errors were corrected in the paperback edition years later. A critical edition of his Collected Prose was published in 2010 to broad critical acclaim. A multi-volume series of his Collected Letters is now in production, with the first volume appearing in 2014 and the second in 2016. Robert Frost continues to hold a unique and almost isolated position in American letters. “Though his career fully spans the modern period and though it is impossible to speak of him as anything other than a modern poet,” writes James M. Cox, “it is difficult to place him in the main tradition of modern poetry.” In a sense, Frost stands at the crossroads of 19th-century American poetry and modernism, for in his verse may be found the culmination of many 19th-century tendencies and traditions as well as parallels to the works of his 20th-century contemporaries. Taking his symbols from the public domain, Frost developed, as many critics note, an original, modern idiom and a sense of directness and economy that reflect the imagism of Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell. On the other hand, as Leonard Unger and William Van O’Connor point out in Poems for Study, “Frost’s poetry, unlike that of such contemporaries as Eliot, Stevens, and the later Yeats, shows no marked departure from the poetic practices of the nineteenth century.” Although he avoids traditional verse forms and only uses rhyme erratically, Frost is not an innovator and his technique is never experimental.    Frost’s theory of poetic composition ties him to both centuries. Like the 19th-century Romantic poets, he maintained that a poem is “never a put-up job. ... It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a loneliness. It is never a thought to begin with. It is at its best when it is a tantalizing vagueness.” Yet, “working out his own version of the ‘impersonal’ view of art,” as Hyatt H. Waggoner observed, Frost also upheld T.S. Eliot ’s idea that the man who suffers and the artist who creates are totally separate. In a 1932 letter to Sydney Cox, Frost explained his conception of poetry: “The objective idea is all I ever cared about. Most of my ideas occur in verse. ... To be too subjective with what an artist has managed to make objective is to come on him presumptuously and render ungraceful what he in pain of his life had faith he had made graceful.”    To accomplish such objectivity and grace, Frost took up 19th-century tools and made them new. Lawrance Thompson has explained that, according to Frost, “the self-imposed restrictions of meter in form and of coherence in content” work to a poet’s advantage; they liberate him from the experimentalist’s burden—the perpetual search for new forms and alternative structures. Thus Frost, as he himself put it in “The Constant Symbol,” wrote his verse regular; he never completely abandoned conventional metrical forms for free verse, as so many of his contemporaries were doing. At the same time, his adherence to meter, line length, and rhyme scheme was not an arbitrary choice. He maintained that “the freshness of a poem belongs absolutely to its not having been thought out and then set to verse as the verse in turn might be set to music.” He believed, rather, that the poem’s particular mood dictated or determined the poet’s “first commitment to metre and length of line.”    Critics frequently point out that Frost complicated his problem and enriched his style by setting traditional meters against the natural rhythms of speech. Drawing his language primarily from the vernacular, he avoided artificial poetic diction by employing the accent of a soft-spoken New Englander. In The Function of Criticism, Yvor Winters faulted Frost for his “endeavor to make his style approximate as closely as possible the style of conversation.” But what Frost achieved in his poetry was much more complex than a mere imitation of the New England farmer idiom. He wanted to restore to literature the “sentence sounds that underlie the words,” the “vocal gesture” that enhances meaning. That is, he felt the poet’s ear must be sensitive to the voice in order to capture with the written word the significance of sound in the spoken word. “ The Death of the Hired Man ,” for instance, consists almost entirely of dialogue between Mary and Warren, her farmer-husband, but critics have observed that in this poem Frost takes the prosaic patterns of their speech and makes them lyrical. To Ezra Pound “The Death of the Hired Man” represented Frost at his best—when he “dared to write ... in the natural speech of New England; in natural spoken speech, which is very different from the ‘natural’ speech of the newspapers, and of many professors.”    Frost’s use of New England dialect is only one aspect of his often discussed regionalism. Within New England, his particular focus was on New Hampshire, which he called “one of the two best states in the Union,” the other being Vermont. In an essay entitled “Robert Frost and New England: A Revaluation,” W.G. O’Donnell noted how from the start, in A Boy’s Will, “Frost had already decided to give his writing a local habitation and a New England name, to root his art in the soil that he had worked with his own hands.” Reviewing North of Boston in the New Republic, Amy Lowell wrote, “Not only is his work New England in subject, it is so in technique. ... Mr. Frost has reproduced both people and scenery with a vividness which is extraordinary.” Many other critics have lauded Frost’s ability to realistically evoke the New England landscape; they point out that one can visualize an orchard in “After Apple-Picking” or imagine spring in a farmyard in “Two Tramps in Mud Time.” In this “ability to portray the local truth in nature,” O’Donnell claims, Frost has no peer. The same ability prompted Pound to declare, “I know more of farm life than I did before I had read his poems. That means I know more of ‘Life.’”    Frost’s regionalism, critics remark, is in his realism, not in politics; he creates no picture of regional unity or sense of community. In The Continuity of American Poetry, Roy Harvey Pearce describes Frost’s protagonists as individuals who are constantly forced to confront their individualism as such and to reject the modern world in order to retain their identity. Frost’s use of nature is not only similar but closely tied to this regionalism. He stays as clear of religion and mysticism as he does of politics. What he finds in nature is sensuous pleasure; he is also sensitive to the earth’s fertility and to man’s relationship to the soil. To critic M.L. Rosenthal, Frost’s pastoral quality, his “lyrical and realistic repossession of the rural and ‘natural,’” is the staple of his reputation.    Yet, just as Frost is aware of the distances between one man and another, so he is also always aware of the distinction, the ultimate separateness, of nature and man. Marion Montgomery has explained, “His attitude toward nature is one of armed and amicable truce and mutual respect interspersed with crossings of the boundaries” between individual man and natural forces. Below the surface of Frost’s poems are dreadful implications, what Rosenthal calls his “shocked sense of the helpless cruelty of things.” This natural cruelty is at work in “Design” and in “Once by the Pacific.” The ominous tone of these two poems prompted Rosenthal’s further comment: “At his most powerful Frost is as staggered by ‘the horror’ as Eliot and approaches the hysterical edge of sensibility in a comparable way. ... His is still the modern mind in search of its own meaning.”    The austere and tragic view of life that emerges in so many of Frost’s poems is modulated by his metaphysical use of detail. As Frost portrays him, man might be alone in an ultimately indifferent universe, but he may nevertheless look to the natural world for metaphors of his own condition. Thus, in his search for meaning in the modern world, Frost focuses on those moments when the seen and the unseen, the tangible and the spiritual intersect. John T. Napier calls this Frost’s ability “to find the ordinary a matrix for the extraordinary.” In this respect, he is often compared with Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson , in whose poetry, too, a simple fact, object, person, or event will be transfigured and take on greater mystery or significance. The poem “ Birches”  is an example: it contains the image of slender trees bent to the ground temporarily by a boy’s swinging on them or permanently by an ice-storm. But as the poem unfolds, it becomes clear that the speaker is concerned not only with child’s play and natural phenomena, but also with the point at which physical and spiritual reality merge.    Such symbolic import of mundane facts informs many of Frost’s poems, and in “Education by Poetry” he explained: “Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, ‘grace’ metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. ... Unless you are at home in the metaphor, unless you have had your proper poetical education in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.” 

• North America
• U.S., New England

Robert Frost

(1874-1963)

Who Was Robert Frost?

Frost spent his first 40 years as an unknown. He exploded on the scene after returning from England at the beginning of World War I . He died of complications from prostate surgery on January 29, 1963.

Early Years

Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California. He spent the first 11 years of his life there, until his journalist father, William Prescott Frost Jr., died of tuberculosis.

Following his father's passing, Frost moved with his mother and sister, Jeanie, to the town of Lawrence, Massachusetts. They moved in with his grandparents, and Frost attended Lawrence High School.

After high school, Frost attended Dartmouth College for several months, returning home to work a slew of unfulfilling jobs.

Beginning in 1897, Frost attended Harvard University but had to drop out after two years due to health concerns. He returned to Lawrence to join his wife.

In 1900, Frost moved with his wife and children to a farm in New Hampshire — property that Frost's grandfather had purchased for them—and they attempted to make a life on it for the next 12 years. Though it was a fruitful time for Frost's writing, it was a difficult period in his personal life and followed the deaths of two of his young children.

During that time, Frost and Elinor attempted several endeavors, including poultry farming, all of which were fairly unsuccessful.

Despite such challenges, it was during this time that Frost acclimated himself to rural life. In fact, he grew to depict it quite well, and began setting many of his poems in the countryside.

Frost met his future love and wife, Elinor White, when they were both attending Lawrence High School. She was his co-valedictorian when they graduated in 1892.

In 1894, Frost proposed to White, who was attending St. Lawrence University , but she turned him down because she first wanted to finish school. Frost then decided to leave on a trip to Virginia, and when he returned, he proposed again. By then, White had graduated from college, and she accepted. They married on December 19, 1895.

White died in 1938. Diagnosed with cancer in 1937 and having undergone surgery, she also had had a long history of heart trouble, to which she ultimately succumbed.

Frost and White had six children together. Their first child, Elliot, was born in 1896. Daughter Lesley was born in 1899.

Elliot died of cholera in 1900. After his death, Elinor gave birth to four more children: son Carol (1902), who would commit suicide in 1940; Irma (1903), who later developed mental illness; Marjorie (1905), who died in her late 20s after giving birth; and Elinor (1907), who died just weeks after she was born.

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Early Poetry

In 1894, Frost had his first poem, "My Butterfly: an Elegy," published in The Independent , a weekly literary journal based in New York City .

Two poems, "The Tuft of Flowers" and "The Trial by Existence," were published in 1906. He could not find any publishers who were willing to underwrite his other poems.

In 1912, Frost and Elinor decided to sell the farm in New Hampshire and move the family to England, where they hoped there would be more publishers willing to take a chance on new poets.

Within just a few months, Frost, now 38, found a publisher who would print his first book of poems, A Boy’s Will , followed by North of Boston a year later.

It was at this time that Frost met fellow poets Ezra Pound and Edward Thomas, two men who would affect his life in significant ways. Pound and Thomas were the first to review his work in a favorable light, as well as provide significant encouragement. Frost credited Thomas's long walks over the English landscape as the inspiration for one of his most famous poems, "The Road Not Taken."

Apparently, Thomas's indecision and regret regarding what paths to take inspired Frost's work. The time Frost spent in England was one of the most significant periods in his life, but it was short-lived. Shortly after World War I broke out in August 1914, Frost and Elinor were forced to return to America.

Public Recognition for Frost’s Poetry

When Frost arrived back in America, his reputation had preceded him, and he was well-received by the literary world. His new publisher, Henry Holt, who would remain with him for the rest of his life, had purchased all of the copies of North of Boston . In 1916, he published Frost's Mountain Interval , a collection of other works that he created while in England, including a tribute to Thomas.

Journals such as the Atlantic Monthly , who had turned Frost down when he submitted work earlier, now came calling. Frost famously sent the Atlantic the same poems that they had rejected before his stay in England.

In 1915, Frost and Elinor settled down on a farm that they purchased in Franconia, New Hampshire. There, Frost began a long career as a teacher at several colleges, reciting poetry to eager crowds and writing all the while.

He taught at Dartmouth and the University of Michigan at various times, but his most significant association was with Amherst College , where he taught steadily during the period from 1916 until his wife’s death in 1938. The main library is now named in his honor.

For a period of more than 40 years beginning in 1921, Frost also spent almost every summer and fall at Middlebury College , teaching English on its campus in Ripton, Vermont.

In the late 1950s, Frost, along with Ernest Hemingway and T. S. Eliot , championed the release of his old acquaintance Ezra Pound, who was being held in a federal mental hospital for treason due to his involvement with fascists in Italy during World War II . Pound was released in 1958, after the indictments were dropped.

Famous Poems

Some of Frost’s most well-known poems include:

• “The Road Not Taken”
• “Fire and Ice”
• “Mending Wall”
• “Home Burial”
• “The Death of the Hired Man”
• “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”
• “Acquainted with the Night”
• “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

Pulitzer Prizes and Awards

During his lifetime, Frost received more than 40 honorary degrees.

In 1924, Frost was awarded his first of four Pulitzer Prizes, for his book New Hampshire . He would subsequently win Pulitzers for Collected Poems (1931), A Further Range (1937) and A Witness Tree (1943).

In 1960, Congress awarded Frost the Congressional Gold Medal.

President John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration

At the age of 86, Frost was honored when asked to write and recite a poem for President John F. Kennedy's 1961 inauguration. His sight now failing, he was not able to see the words in the sunlight and substituted the reading of one of his poems, "The Gift Outright," which he had committed to memory.

Soviet Union Tour

In 1962, Frost visited the Soviet Union on a goodwill tour. However, when he accidentally misrepresented a statement made by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev following their meeting, he unwittingly undid much of the good intended by his visit.

On January 29, 1963, Frost died from complications related to prostate surgery. He was survived by two of his daughters, Lesley and Irma. His ashes are interred in a family plot in Bennington, Vermont.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Robert Lee Frost
• Birth Year: 1874
• Birth date: March 26, 1874
• Birth State: California
• Birth City: San Francisco
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Robert Frost was an American poet who depicted realistic New England life through language and situations familiar to the common man. He won four Pulitzer Prizes for his work and spoke at John F. Kennedy's 1961 inauguration.
• Fiction and Poetry
• Astrological Sign: Aries
• Harvard University
• Lawrence High School
• Dartmouth College
• Death Year: 1963
• Death date: January 29, 1963
• Death State: Massachusetts
• Death City: Boston
• Death Country: United States

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Robert Frost Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
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• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/robert-frost
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• Last Updated: December 1, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• The ear does it. The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.
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Explore the beauty of poetry – discover the poet within

A Short Biography Of Robert Frost

Robert Frost is one of the most renowned and celebrated poets of the 20th century. Born in San Francisco in 1874, he was raised in a working-class family and started writing poetry while attending both high school and college in Massachusetts. He served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1958 to 1963, and is a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Frost’s works explore themes of nature, rural life and human relationships; they often use traditional forms such as sonnets and villanelles, as well as free-verse compositions.

The power of Frost’s verse lies in his use of colloquial language which speaks to the everyday experience of his readers. He was also highly influenced by New England writers including Edward Taylor, Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and incorporated many of their ideas and techniques into his own work. Frost’s classic works include ‘The Road Not Taken’, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ and ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’.

Frost was an acclaimed poet in his lifetime and was described by friends and critics alike as a genius and an American master. In addition to his Pulitzer Prizes, he was awarded numerous honorary degrees and fellowships, and was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960. Frost’s life and work have been widely celebrated and have helped to define American poetry.

Frost continued publishing poems and books of poetry until his death in 1963. After being affected by health problems in the last five years of his life, he passed away in Boston at the age of 88. Robert Frost’s poetic legacy is significant, and he is remembered today as one of the most important American poets to ever live.

Early Life and Education

Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, to Isabelle and William Prescott Frost, Jr. His father died when Frost was 11, and he was raised by his mother and stepfather who was a teacher.

At the age of 15, Frost started attending high school in Lawrence, Massachusetts. During his high school years, he published poems in the Lawrence High School newspaper. After graduating high school in 1892, he attended Dartmouth College for two months and later, Harvard for one semester.

In 1895, Frost returned to Lawrence and focused on writing poetry. He married Elinor Miriam White in 1895 and they had six children together. In 1897, Frost left Lawrence to teach at the New Hampshire State Normal School in Plymouth, New Hampshire where he experimented with his poetry and developed his own poetic style.

Frost was highly influenced by the writings of Emerson, Whitman and Edward Taylor. In 1912, he began submitting his poetry and soon after, several of his poems were published in nationally-renowned magazines.

Career and Major Works

In 1913, Frost and his family moved to England in search of a better literary atmosphere. While in England, he wrote and published his first book of poems, ‘A Boy’s Will’. This book was highly acclaimed in Britain but did not gain recognition in the U.S. until 1915. Later poetry books such as ‘North of Boston’ (1914) and ‘Mountain Interval’ (1916) shocked readers with their unconventional use of language and themes.

In 1920, Frost returned to the U.S., and soon after he began winning recognition, awards, lectureships and honorary degrees. Over the next few decades, he wrote and published numerous books of poetry, and also established himself as a literary lecturer. In 1938, he presented a lecture at the Library of Congress that received national attention.

In 1936, he was teaching at Amherst College, and soon after, he began teaching at Harvard and University of Michigan. During this period, he wrote ‘A Witness Tree’ (1942) and ‘Steeple Bush’ (1947). His poems from this period reflect his newfound faith in human kindness and optimism. Frost’s last book of poems, ‘In the Clearing’, was published in 1962.

Awards and Achievements

Frost has won numerous awards and honorary titles throughout his stellar career. He was awarded four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry between 1924 and 1943, and four Special Citations from the Pulitzer Prize Board between 1944 and 1954. The U.S. government also awarded him with a Grant in Aid of Arts, Letters and Humanities in 1954. In 1958, he became the Poet Laureate of the United States and was also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1960, Frost was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. He is the only person to receive this honor without first serving in a political or military capacity. Several colleges, universities and public buildings are named for him, including at Amherst College and the University of Michigan.

After his death in 1963, Frost’s legacy has only grown stronger. His poems are now required reading in many schools, and he continues to be one of the most studied and influential poets of all time. His work is part of the literary canon of the U.S. and beyond, and has been adapted for the stage, television and film.

Frost’s work is known for its accessible language and its subtle exploration of timeless themes. His poems make use of traditional poetic forms while speaking to the everyday experience of life. He had a deep appreciation for nature and the interconnectedness of life, and these ideas are omnipresent in his poetry. Robert Frost remains a symbol of poetic excellence and a source of inspiration for many writers.

Famous Quotes

Because of his lifelong appreciation of language, Frost left behind many famous quotations. Some of his most well-known quotes include: “The best way out is always through”, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on”, “A poet never takes notes; you never take notes in a love affair” and “A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age”.

Influence on American Poetry

Frost was a leading figure in American poetry and was hugely influential to poets from many different generations. He had a lifelong love of language and believed that it should be accessible to everyone. His free-verse style of writing resonates with readers and is often cited as a major influence on modern poets. Frost’s work is a symbol of American poetry, and is required reading in many schools.

The widespread appreciation of Frost’s work can be attributed to his accessible language and his profound insights into human relationships. He is considered one of the most important American poets of all time, and his legacy continues to shape American poetry and literature.

Dannah Hannah is an established poet and author who loves to write about the beauty and power of poetry. She has published several collections of her own works, as well as articles and reviews on poets she admires. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English, with a specialization in poetics, from the University of Toronto. Hannah was also a panelist for the 2017 Futurepoem book Poetry + Social Justice, which aimed to bring attention to activism through poetry. She lives in Toronto, Canada, where she continues to write and explore the depths of poetry and its influence on our lives.

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Robert Frost

Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, where his father, William Prescott Frost, Jr., and his mother, Isabelle Moodie, had moved from Pennsylvania shortly after marrying. After the death of his father from tuberculosis when Frost was eleven years old, he moved with his mother and sister, Jeanie, who was two years younger, to Lawrence, Massachusetts. He became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, enrolled at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1892 and, later, at Harvard University, though he never earned a formal degree.

Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel . His first published poem, “My Butterfly,” appeared on November 8, 1894 in the New York newspaper The Independent .

In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, with whom he’d shared valedictorian honors in high school, and who was a major inspiration for his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after they tried and failed at farming in New Hampshire. It was abroad where 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 (Henry Holt and Company, 1913) and North of Boston (Henry Holt and Company, 1914), thereby establishing his reputation. By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poets in America, and with each new book—including New Hampshire (Henry Holt and Company, 1923), A Further Range (Henry Holt and Company, 1936), Steeple Bush (Henry Holt and Company, 1947), and In the Clearing (Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1962)—his fame and honors, including four Pulitzer Prizes, increased. Frost served as a consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress from 1958–59. In 1962, he was presented the Congressional Gold Medal. 

Though Frost’s 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 merely a regional 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.”

President John F. Kennedy, at whose inauguration Frost delivered a poem, said of the poet, “He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding.” And famously, “He saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”

Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963.

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Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.

Frequently honored during his lifetime, Frost is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America’s rare “public literary figures, almost an artistic institution”. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont.

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Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken: Meaning and Analysis

General Education

Robert Frost is arguably one of the most well-known American poets of all time, so it’s not surprising that his work is taught in high schools and colleges across the nation. Because he’s so famous, chances are you’ve encountered “The Road Not Taken” before .

We’re here to help you build a deeper understanding of “The Road Not Taken.” To help you learn what Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” poem is all about, we’ll cover the following in this article:

• A brief intro to the poet, Robert Frost
• Information about the poem’s background
• “The Road Not Taken” meaning
• “The Road Not Taken” analysis, including the top two themes in the poem
• The poetic devices in “The Road Not Taken” that you need to know

There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get going!

Robert Frost is widely recognized as one of the most influential American poets of the 20th century. (Sneha Raushan/ Wikimedia )

Robert Frost Biography

Robert Frost was born in 1874 in San Francisco, California. His father was a newspaper editor (a profession Frost later practiced himself, among others), and his mother was a teacher and Scottish immigrant. When he was about ten years old, his family moved to Massachusetts to be near his grandfather, who owned a sawmill. Frost was named both the valedictorian and the “class poet” of his high school graduating class ...and two years later published his first poem, “My Butterfly: An Elegy,” in the New York Independent magazine. 

At this point, Frost knew he wanted to be a poet. But unfortunately, the next segment of Frost’s life would be marked by upheaval . He attended both Dartmouth and Harvard, but dropped out of both before graduating. His poetry wasn’t gaining traction in the United States, either. To complicate matters further, Frost and his wife, Elinor, suffered personal tragedy when two of their six children died in infancy. 

In 1900, feeling frustrated by his job prospects and a lack of traction in his poetry career, Frost moved his family to a farm left to him by his grandfather in Derry, New Hampshire. Frost would live there for nine years, and many of his most famous early poems were written before his morning chores while tending to the farm . But Frost’s poetry was still largely overlooked by American publishers. Consequently, Frost decided to sell the farm in 1911 and moved his family to London. It was there he published his first anthology of poetry, A Boy’s Will, in 1913 . 

Frost’s second anthology, North of Boston, was published in 1914 and found massive success in England. Finally, after years of struggle, Frost became a famous poet essentially overnight. In order to avoid WWI, Frost returned to the U.S. in 1915 and began teaching at Amherst College and the University of Michigan , all the while continuing to write poetry. He received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and became the public face of 20th century American poetry . Late in life, at 86 years old, Robert Frost also became the first inaugural poet at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1960. 

Throughout his career, Frost never strayed far from old-fashioned, pastoral poetry, despite the fact that newer American poets moved in a more experimental direction. Frost’s poetry continued to focus on rural New England life up until his death in 1963. 

Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken” Poem

“The Road Not Taken” is a narrative poem , meaning it is a poem that tells a story. It was written in 1915 as a joke for Frost’s friend, Edward Thomas. Frost and Thomas were fond of hiking together, and Thomas often had trouble making up his mind which trail they should follow. (Yes, that’s right: one of the most famous American poems was originally written as a goofy private joke between two friends!)

Frost first read it to some college students who, to his surprise, thought it a very serious poem. “The Road Not Taken” was first published in the August 1915 issue of The Atlantic Monthly , and then was re-published as the opening poem in his poetry collection Mountain Interval the next year.

The full text of the poem is below.

“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

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.

Frost's most famous poem got its start as part of a letter sent to his best friend on the eve of World War I.

The Background Behind “The Road Not Taken” Poem

“The Road Not Taken” has become well known for its perceived encouragement to take the “[road] less traveled by.” In other words, many people interpret this poem as a call to blaze new trails and break away from the status quo. This is partly why lots of people misremember the poem’s title as “The Road Less Travelled.” 

This interpretation of “The Road Not Taken” is debatable (more on that later), but it was enough to inspire Frost’s friend Edward Thomas to make a very grave decision to fight in World War I.

Frost and Thomas were great friends while Frost lived in England, both of them were well-read and very interested in nature. They frequently took long walks together , observing nature in the English countryside. However, Frost’s time in England ended in 1915 when World War I was on the verge of breaking out. He returned to the United States to avoid the war and fully expected Thomas to follow him. 

Thomas did not. Frost’s poem came in the mail as Thomas was deciding whether to leave Europe or to participate in the war effort. While “The Road Not Taken” wasn’t the only thing that made Thomas enlist and fight in World War I, it was a factor in his decision. Thomas, regretting his lack of achievement compared to his good friend Frost and feeling that the poem mocked his indecisiveness, decided to take initiative and fight for his country. Unfortunately, Thomas was killed at the Battle of Arras on April 9, 1917.

Thomas was inspired to take “the road not taken” because of Frost’s poem. The same is true for many people who’ve read the poem since it was first published in 1915. The concept of taking a “road less traveled'' seems to advocate for individuality and perseverance , both of which are considered central to American culture. The poem has been republished thousands upon thousands of times and has inspired everything from self-help books to car commercials .

Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken” Analysis: Meaning and Themes

To help you understand the significance of Robert Frost’s poetry, we’ll break down the overall meaning and major themes of the poem in our “The Road Not Taken” analysis below. 

But before we do, go back and reread the poem. Once you have that done, come back here...and we can get started! 

Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken” Meaning

“The Road Not Taken” is a poem that argues for the importance of our choices, both big and small, since they shape our journey through life . For Frost, the most important decisions we make aren’t the ones we spend tons of time thinking about, like who we have relationships with , where we go to college , or what our future career should be . Instead, Frost’s poem posits that the small choices we make each and every day also have big impacts on our lives. Each decision we make sets us upon a path that we may not understand the importance of until much, much later. 

This theme is reflected throughout the poem. For instance, the poem begins with a speaker placing us in a scene, specifically at the point where two roads break away from each other in the middle of a “yellow wood.”

The speaker is sorry they cannot go both directions and still “be one traveler,” which is to say that they cannot live two divergent lives and still be one single person . In other words, the speaker can’t “have their cake and eat it, too.” The speaker has to choose one direction to go down, because like in life, making a decision often means that other doors are subsequently shut for you. 

For example, if you choose to go to college at UCLA, that means you’re also choosing not to go to college elsewhere. You’ll never know what it would be like to go to the University of Michigan or as a freshman straight out of high school because you made a different choice. But this is true for smaller, day-to-day decisions as well. Choosing who you spend time with, how hard you study, and what hobbies your pursue are examples of smaller choices that also shape your future, too.

The speaker of the poem understands that . They stand at the crossroads of these two paths for a long time, contemplating their choice. First, they stare down one path as far as he or she can, to where it trails off into the undergrowth. The speaker then decides to take the other path, which they state is just as “fair,” meaning just as attractive as the first. The narrator states that the second path “wanted wear,” meaning that it was slightly more overgrown than the first path.

But more importantly, no matter which path the speaker takes, they know they’re committed to follow it wherever it may lead. We see that in this stanza:

While the speaker says they “saved the first” path for “another day” to make them feel better about their decision, the next two lines show that the speaker realizes they probably won’t be able to double back and take the first path, no matter where the second one leads. Just like in life, each path leads to another path, and then another. In other words, the decisions we make in the moment add up and influence where we end up in life--and we don’t really get a “redo” on. 

After choosing their path, the speaker says they look forward to a day far in the future when, “with a sigh,” they’ll tell people about taking the road “less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference.” 

Does this mean that taking the one less traveled has “made all the difference” in a good way?

Saying so “with a sigh” doesn’t necessarily sound like a good thing. The poem isn’t at all clear on whether or not taking the less traveled path was a good choice or a bad choice . So while the poem is clear that all of our choices shape the path we take in life, it’s more ambiguous about whether choosing “less traveled” paths is a good thing or not. That’s up to readers to decide! 

Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken” Theme 1: The Power of Hindsight 

This brings us to our first theme: how hindsight gives our choices power.  

The speaker begins at a point of bifurcation (which is a fancy way of saying “break into two branches”). As readers, we’re meant to take the poem both as a literal story about someone in the woods trying to decide which way to go, as well as a metaphor about how our life choices are like divergent paths in the woods. 

Like we mentioned earlier, the poem is clear that you can’t take two paths and still “be one traveler,” nor can you be certain that you’ll ever get a chance to test out your other options. That’s because every choice you make leads to more choices, all of which lead you further and further from our starting point. 

However, the poem also suggests that while the choices we make are important, how we interpret these choices is what really makes us who we are. We see this in the last lines of the poem, which read: 

I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Essentially, the speaker is saying that later in life he will look back in time and see that moment as one of great significance. But we can only know which choices matter the most through the power of retrospection. It’s like the old saying goes: hindsight is 20/20! 

Here’s what frost means: when we’re making choices in life, they might seem inconsequential or like they’re not that big of a deal. But once time passes and we’ve journeyed down our path a little farther, we can look back into the past and see which choices have shaped us the most. And oftentimes, those choices aren’t the ones we think are most important in the moment. The clarity and wisdom of hindsight allows us to realize that doing something like taking the path “less traveled by” has impacted our lives immensely. 

"The Road Not Taken" is also about our perspective...and how hindsight helps us reconsider our past decision.  

Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken” Theme 2: Perspective and Memory

The other major theme in “The Road Not Taken” is how our individual perspective. 

The speaker of the poem spends most of their time trying to decide which path to take. They describe each path in detail: the first one curves into the undergrowth, while the second was more tempting because it was “grassy” and a little less worn. 

But the truth is that these paths have more in common than not. They’re both in the woods, for one. But the speaker also says the first is “just as fair” as the other, meaning it’s just as pretty or attractive. They also mention that “And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black,” which is a poetic way of saying that neither path had been walked on in a while. And even the one the poet says is less traveled was actually “worn...about the same” as the first path! 

So it’s t he speaker’s perspective that makes these paths seem divergent rather than them actually being super different from one another! 

Because our perspectives shape the way we understand the world, it also affects our memories.  Our memories help us understand who we are, and they shape the person we become. But as we tell ourselves our own story, we overwrite our memories . It’s kind of like deleting a sentence and retyping it...only for it to change a little bit each time! 

What is your earliest memory? What is your favorite memory? Now think about this: are you remembering them, or are you remembering remembering them? Is there a difference? Yes, because science shows that every single time we recall a memory we change it . It’s very possible that your favorite early memory isn’t your memory at all--it is more likely a memory of being told something that happened to you. Perhaps you have a photograph of a moment that triggers your memory. The photograph may not change, but you do and your memory of the things that happened in that moment do.

So, if our experiences and our choices make us who we are, but we’re constantly misremembering and changing our memories, how do actual events even matter? 

“The Road Not Taken” says that they do. Our choices we make are impactful, but the way we remember them is what helps shape us as individuals. So “The Road Not Taken” isn’t necessarily an ode to bravely taking the less popular path when others wouldn’t. It’s more like an ode to being resigned to believing our choices made us who we are, even though if we hadn’t made them, hadn’t taken that path, we’d be someone else who made choices that were just as valid.

Poetic devices are the tools we can use to unpack the meaning of a poem. Here are two that are important to understanding "The Road Not Taken."

The Top 2 Poetic Devices in “The Road Not Taken”

Poetic devices are literary devices that poets use to enhance and create a poem’s structure, tone, rhythm, and meaning. In Robert Frost’s, “The Road Not Taken,” Frost uses iambic meter and voice to reinforce the poem’s meaning . 

Poetic Device 1: Iambic Meter

First thing’s first: the following is only a short overview of iambic meter. If you want an in-depth discussion of meter, check out our blog about it . 

So what is meter? The English language has about an equal number of stressed and unstressed syllables. Arranging these stressed syllables into consistent is one of the most common ways of giving a poem a structure... and this arrangement is called “meter.” 

A poem’s meter is made up of units. Each “unit” of stressed and unstressed syllables that repeats in a poem is called a foot. A foot can either be an iamb (one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable), a trochee (one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable), a dactyl (one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables) or an anapest (two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable). 

The iamb is the foot that comes to us most naturally as native English speakers, and the most iambs we can speak easily without having to inhale for another breath is about five. So the most common structure for English language poetry is iambic pentameter , meaning the most common foot is an iamb, and there are five iambs per line. Historically, the vast majority of poetry written in English has been in iambic pentameter, and it was the default format for English poetry for centuries.

But pentameter isn’t the only iambic meter : two feet make dimeter, three feet make trimeter, four feet make tetrameter, and six feet make hexameter, and so forth.

The Modernist poets started moving away from these traditional repeating patterns of meter just after World War I, using invented patterns called “free verse.” Although Modernist free verse didn’t replace metrical verse overnight or completely, it slowly broke down the central importance of it in ways that are still felt today. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is from the very tail end of the iambic-meter-as-a-necessity era. Frost stubbornly and famously stuck to the traditional metrical forms , comparing free verse to playing tennis “with the net down.”

It is the iambic meter that gives the poem its “old-fashioned” rhythm and comfortable feeling. It’s also the thing that makes the poem sound so natural when you read it out loud. You may not even immediately recognize that the poem is in iambic meter, but it becomes clear when you start breaking down the lines. Take this one, for example:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

Looking at the stressed and unstressed syllables we get:

two ROADS/di-VERGED/in a YELL/ow WOOD

The capitalized syllables are stressed, and the lowercase ones aren’t. Each pair of these is an iamb! 

There are four stressed syllables on this line , as well as every other line in the poem. That means this poem is in iambic tetrameter. The most common foot is an iamb (although notice that the third foot is an anapest), and there are four of them.

So why is this important? First, iambic tetrameter is a metrical pattern favored by the 19th century Romantics , who very frequently wrote poems that involved lonely people having great epiphanies while out in nature by themselves. By mimicking that style, Frost pulls on a long poetic tradition helps readers hone in on some of the major themes of his poem--specifically, that the speaker’s decision in the woods will have long-term consequences for both their character and their life. 

The iambic form also rolls off of the tongue easily because it’s the most common meter in the English language. That also echoes the importance of nature in “The Road Not Taken”: both in terms of the natural imagery in the poem, but also in its discussion of the nature of perspective and memory. In that way, the form of the poem helps to reinforce its themes! 

Poetic Device 2: Voice

The second poetic device that Frost employs is voice. The voice of a poem is the product of all the stylistic and vocabulary choices that add up to create a character . In this case, the poem has one character: the speaker. The speaker is unnamed, and it’s through their perspective that we experience the poem. It’s easy to think of the speaker as being Frost himself, but try to resist that temptation. The voice of a poem is an artificial construct, a character created to give the poem a certain effect.\

So how does Frost create this voice? First, note that the poem is in first person . That means we’re getting the speaker’s perspective in their own words, signaled by their use of first person pronouns like “I.” Additionally, the audience isn’t being addressed directly (like in Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise). Instead, it’s as if we’ve intruded upon the speaker’s thoughts as they ruminate over the potential ramifications of choosing one path over another.

Writing the poem in first person means that we’re getting the story straight from the horse’s mouth. In some ways, this is a good thing: it helps us understand the speaker’s unique perspective and in their own unique voice. But in other ways, it makes the objective details of the moment less clear. That’s because t he speaker’s recounting of the moment in the woods is colored by his own memory. That means we have to rely on the speaker’s interpretation of events...and decide how that impacts our interpretation of the poem! The first person narration also gives the poem much of its reflective nature.

What’s Next?

Analyzing poetry can be tricky, so it’s helpful to read a few expert analyses. We have a bunch on our blog that you can read through, like this one about Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night” or this article that explains 10 different sonnets!

It’s much easier to analyze poetry when you have the right tools to do it! Don’t miss our in-depth guides to poetic devices like assonance , iambic pentameter , and allusion .

If you’re more about writing poetry than analyzing it, we’ve got you covered! Here are five great tips for writing poetry (and a few scholarships for budding poets , too).

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

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Quote Investigator®

Tracing Quotations

In Three Words, I Can Sum Up Everything I’ve Learned About Life. It Goes On

Robert Frost? Edna St. Vincent Millay? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: The acclaimed American poet Robert Frost was asked as an octogenarian what he had learned about life, and he succinctly replied: It goes on.

I have been unable to find a contemporaneous citation, and a popular quotation website says that the attribution is disputed. What do you think?

Quote Investigator: Robert Frost did utter this proverbial wisdom during his eightieth birthday celebration according to journalist and self-help writer Ray Josephs. In September 1954 the Sunday newspaper supplement “This Week Magazine” published “Robert Frost’s Secret” by Josephs which included the following exchange. Ellipses were in the original text. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI : [1] 1954 September 5, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Section: This Week Magazine, Robert Frost’s Secret by Ray Josephs, Quote Page 2, Column 1, Cincinnati, Ohio. (Newspapers_com)

“In all your years and all your travels,” I asked, “what do you think is the most important thing you’ve learned about life?” He paused a moment, then with the twinkle sparkling under those brambly eyebrows he replied: “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on. In all the confusions of today, with all our troubles . . . with politicians and people slinging the word fear around, all of us become discouraged . . . tempted to say this is the end, the finish. But life — it goes on. It always has. It always will. Don’t forget that.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

The adage was certainly not novel although Frost’s emphatic version was memorable. Decades earlier in 1915 fellow poet Edna St. Vincent Millay placed a sardonic instance into a verse of the work “Ashes of Life”: [2] 1915 September, Current Opinion, Volume 59, Number 3, Edited by Edward J. Wheeler, Voices of the Living Poets: Ashes of Life by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Quote Page 200, Column 3, The Current … Continue reading

Love has gone and left me, and the neighbors knock and borrow. And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse. — And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow There’s this little street and this little house.

In 1971 the “Des Moines Sunday Register” reprinted the article containing Frost’s statement under the title “Words To Live By”. [3] 1971 January 24, Des Moines Sunday Register (The Des Moines Register), Section: Picture, Words To Live By, (Today’s Words To Live By were selected by Author Ray Josephs), Quote Page 2, Column … Continue reading

In 1978 the syndicated feature “The Aces on Bridge” relayed an instance of the saying: [4] 1978 February 1, The Ithaca Journal, The Aces on Bridge: West learned too late by Ira G. Corn Jr., Quote Page 26, Column 5, Ithaca, New York. (Newspapers_com)

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” —Robert Frost.

In 1984 the Associated Press published the following “Thought for today”: [5] 1984 April 2, Casper Star-Tribune, Almanac by The Associated Press, Quote Page B2, Column 3, Casper, Wyoming. (Newspapers_com)

Thought for today: “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.” — Robert Frost, American poet (1874-1963).

In conclusion, there is substantive evidence that Robert Frost did make the remarks in the 1954 citation. The accuracy of the quotation depends on the testimony of Ray Josephs.

(Great thanks to Lino’s Version whose tweet led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.)

Robert Frost

A short biography of robert frost, robert frost’s literary style, a regional poet, symbolism in robert frost’s poetry, seriousness and spontaneity in frost’s poetry.

The whole life of Robert Frost was dedicated to his poetry, which shows his seriousness for his art. But in the initial life, he did not pay much attention to his poetic talent or analyze the source of his poetic gift. This turned the poetry of Frost having unforced, simple, and lyric charm. It appears to be written effortlessly and naturally, just as breathing.

Isolation and Loneliness in Robert Frost’s Poetry

  It’s Thus He Does It Of A Winter Night.”

The Portrayal of Characters and Psychoanalysis

Narrative and dramatic quality of frost’s poetry, fancy and fact in frost’s poetry, conversational and colloquial style of robert frost, poet of nature.

One of the dominant subjects of Frost’s poetry is Nature; however, he is not nature-poet like that of Thomas Hardy and Wordsworth. His poetry focuses on a man in nature, whereas the poetry of Wordsworth deals with the prospect of the natural world. He perceives no infusing essence in the natural objective and hardhearted. For Frost, nature provides comfort as well as a threat. 

Philosophy, Moral Didacticism, and Aphorism

Lyrical quality, fusion or integration in frost’s poetry, metaphysical elements in frost’s poetry, the irony in robert frost’s poetry, works of robert frost.

Robert Frost

Married life.

Robert Lee Frost married Elinor White, with whom he shared his valedictorian honors. The couple got married in 1895 after which Frost tried his luck in the teaching profession. He spent two years at Harvard but could not complete his degree. It was difficult for him to raise a family. Therefore, he tried his hands on chicken farming at Methuen, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, that business also met failure. Another calamity hit when his children died. Despite failures, loss, and frustrations in business and life, Robert never gave up and pursued his interest in poetry resolutely.

Some Important Facts of His Life

Writing career.

Robert Frost added more colors to the world of literature. Despite having a traumatic life, he secured a reputable place as a literary man with his creative and thoughtful ideas. The early demise of his father and his children provided him with an insight to feel the intense pain of loss and express it in simple and ordinary language. He documented these ideas in his poems and plays so well, such as “After Apple-Picking”, “Mending Wall” and “Out- Out” have become household names on account of their deceptively innocent themes .

Robert Frost’s Works

Robert frost’s impact on future literature, famous quotes, related posts:, post navigation.

100 Famous Poems by Robert Frost

A Summary and Analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Fire and Ice’ is one of the best-known and most widely anthologised poems by the American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963). The poem has a symbolic, even allegorical quality to it, which makes more sense when it is analysed in its literary and historical context. Frost wrote ‘Fire and Ice’ in 1920, and it was published in Harper’s Magazine in December of that year.

You can read ‘Fire and Ice’ here before proceeding to our analysis of the poem below.

The elements of fire and ice mentioned in the poem, and foregrounded in its title, are two of the four Aristotelian or classical elements, along with earth and air (although ‘ice’ is usually just described as water, Frost – whose very surname here summons the icy conditions of one half of the poem – is purposely summoning these classical elements).

In summary, ‘Fire and Ice’ is a nine-line poem in which Frost tells us that he has heard some people say that the world will end in fire, while others reckon it will end in ice. In other words, the world will either burn up or freeze up. Frost’s speaker goes on to assert that his own view is that fire is more likely, especially in light of his experiences of desire (which is often linked with fire and heat, e.g. we talk of ‘burning with desire’ for someone).

However, ice comes a close second for him: he’s also experienced enough of the destructive power of cold, icy hatred to see how that might consume the world, too, and be sufficient to destroy it.

We said that fire and ice are perhaps more allegorical than symbolic in Frost’s poem, because rather than leaving these deeply symbolic forces of fire and ice open to speculation and different interpretations, he goes on to link them very specifically to two particular emotions: desire for fire, and hate for ice.

In other words, will humans destroy the world through hating each other so much that we all kill each other? Or will passionate desire actually destroy everything?

In other words, what begins in rather elemental, open-ended terms (perhaps even inviting us to think of global warming, something unknown to Frost, when we read of the world ending in fire) comes to have a distinctly human aspect, grounded in human emotions and behaviour.

What makes ‘Fire and Ice’ such a haunting and even troubling poem is its acknowledgment that desire and passion can be more deadly and destructive than mere hate: hate (‘ice’) may well consume us all through war (we need only look at how religious and political differences can make whole groups of people hate their neighbours), but desire (‘fire’) may prove even more powerful because it can provide the zeal, the irrational belief in something, that will fuel even more destructive behaviour.

Frost wrote ‘Fire and Ice’ in 1920. This is just two years after the end of the First World War, and a time when revolution, apocalypse, and social and political chaos were on many people’s minds. And especially on poets’ minds.

A year earlier, W. B. Yeats had written ‘The Second Coming’, with its famous declaration, ‘ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold ’, and its assertion that a ‘second coming’ must be ‘at hand’, with some sphinx-like creature slowly making its way towards Bethlehem to be born as a second Christ.

Five years after Frost wrote ‘Fire and Ice’, T. S. Eliot would offer his own version of apocalypse in ‘The Hollow Men’ (1925): ‘ This is the way the world ends ’, he says, famously, ‘Not with a bang but a whimper.’ ‘Fire and Ice’ should be seen in the broader literary context of these ‘apocalyptic’ poems.

‘Fire and Ice’ was supposedly the inspiration for the title of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire , and lends a curiously apocalyptic meaning to Game of Thrones . Will the world end in fire or ice?

This idea of one world coming to an end and another, potentially, being born, is obviously also an important context for Robert Frost’s poem: the idea of an old world order giving way to a new was ‘in the air’ when he wrote the poem.

About Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1874-1963) is regarded as one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century. And yet he didn’t belong to any particular movement: unlike his contemporaries William Carlos Williams or Wallace Stevens he was not a modernist, preferring more traditional modes and utilising a more direct and less obscure poetic language.

Many of his poems are about the natural world, with woods and trees featuring prominently in some of his most famous and widely anthologised poems (‘The Road Not Taken’, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, ‘Birches’, ‘Tree at My Window’). Elsewhere, he was fond of very short and pithy poetic statements: see ‘Fire and Ice’ and ‘But Outer Space’, for example.

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2 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’”

It is interesting that Eliot wrote his apocalyptic poem five years after with his own spin. Did Frost influence his version?

That’s a good question. It’s difficult to say what Eliot thought of Frost, and how familiar he was with his work, although it is certainly curious that, in the midst of the next war, in ‘Little Gidding’ (1942), Eliot gives us the line ‘This is the death of water and fire.’

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How Robert Frost’s Poetry Reflected His Life Research Paper

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Frost was a poet for all people in that, as a mature poet, he used plain English, and he wrote about the everyday things in his surroundings, often as metaphors for the day-to-day cares of life. He was a farmer by choice for much of his life, and wrote about nature and the seasons, especially favoring Winter. His life was not extraordinary in any important way, though he did have more than the usual share of sorrow.

However, he never quite fit in anywhere, as evidenced in his poem: Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood: “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” It was not Robert Frost’s life being different which made him and his poetry, but rather, his reaction to life which was different, and his insight and ability to see things and communicate that to the reader that made him a distinctive voice in the wilderness.

Poets are not born: they are made. A poet needs to have a facility with language and an eye to see (not necessarily the actual eye, but discernment) truth. Poets make connections, and so every poet’s work is intimately connected with who he or she is. What they write is their interaction with life.

One place that Frost did not fit in was at school as a student. His father died when he was eleven and he and his mother moved back to Massachusetts from San Francisco to live with relatives. “In 1897 he enrolled at Harvard, hoping to prepare for a career in college teaching, but he left after two years without a degree.” (Greenberg and Hepburn ix) His grandfather despaired that he would ever succeed at anything and gave him a farm in Derry to help him out.

Frost worked the farm, but could not make enough to support him and his wife. He was obligated to work the farm for ten years, and he wrote all this time. One interesting facet of poetry is that the actual writing of a poem may not be representative of its incarnation. That is, a poem may begin in the subconscious long before it finally rolls off the pen. So we have no way to know when any particular work of Frost’s began forming in his mind. We only know when it was published. Therefore we can only guess by the content when any particular poem had its genesis.

For example, the poem The Good Hours (1915) is written about the narrator taking a walk through the town and far past, then returning to find everything closed down, and all the windows dark. He commented that he felt a connection to them: “I had such company outward bound.” When he came back, he realized that he was still an outsider. Everyone else in the small farming community was asleep and yes, he “profaned” the snowy streets with his footsteps. So we find that he valued nature, and this idea likely began while he was still living in Derry, but he was an outsider. He was even more alone after his mother died. He echoes this in his almost shockingly frank poem, Home Burial (1911).

Frost and his wife went to England in 1912, where he made the acquaintance of Ezra Pound, a prime influence in his life. It was in England in 1913 that his first volume, A Boy’s Will, was published. He wrote “his second letter to Miss Ward. He gave her information about how A Boy’s Will came to be published, not omitting to mention that he believed she would know the poems in it were the natural result of his life.” (Sutton 83) So we see, even from his own words, that his poetry was very connected to his life. By this time he had lost both parents and this was not the last of his trials. It is no wonder that death figures in many of his poems. In fact, from his biography one wonders how he wrote so much of joy, as in The Road Not Taken (1916).

By 1915 Frost had bought yet another farm in New England and began teaching at Amherst College. “In his discussion of nature in Frost’s poetry, for example, Robert Faggen argues that in Frost’s natural world one does not find Arcadia. Instead, Frost’s nature “creates hierarchies and stability only for a moment before its relentless warfare cancels and levels inequalities insect and human alike.” (Wilcox and Barron 133) However, nature seems to have drawn him to itself in both his writing and his life. He simply could not live in the city. We see this in Acquainted with the Night, which alludes to all the evils in the city and the need to “outwalk every city light”

If one reads merely a list of the titles of Frost’s poems, it is all about nature, one poem after another. Yet Frost never really made his living with any of his farms. In Mending Wall we get a hint of the way he felt so different from other New Englanders.

“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.’ “ (Frost 1930)

His neighbor’s cows would never mix with his trees, yet his neighbor insisted on mending the wall. Walls keep people apart and cultural barriers, such as the values shown in this poem, where his neighbor is adamant about keeping a tradition which is not only needless but useless work. And the telling phrase, “Good fences make good neighbors”, points out that the neighbor defines a “good neighbor” as one who stays on his side of the wall.

By 1920 it was obvious that mental illness would plague his sister until she died ten years later. As time passed, Frost’s poetry dealt with the strangeness and thoughts of death in Fire and Ice and Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.

Fire and Ice is a very subtle touch on opposing forces and sanity as he talks about an insane choice. In the second poem, we know that he is thinking about how “lovely, dark and deep: the snowy woods are, and reminds himself that he has “promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.” Those miles were years, many of them spent alone after his wife died in 1938.

Frost lost a daughter, a son, and his wife all within 12 years from his sister’s death. It is extremely hard for parents losing one child. Frost lost two children, his sister, and his wife at a very young age. So a man who already felt isolated seemed to become even more alone and nature, while close, was also cruel, as evidenced in poems like An Old Man’s Winter Night: “One aged man — one man — can’t fill a house, A farm, a countryside, or if he can, It’s thus he does it of a winter night.” (Frost 135)

Many with whom I have discussed Frost and the meaning of his poems say they think he was merely literal, that I read too much into him. I cannot believe this. It is simply too convenient to be a mere coincidence that there seems always to be some double meaning in his poems. I think that too many people have been touched by the feelings conjured up by his poetry for it to be that simple.

He saw things from a different angle, not like a child who creeps along and looks from the ground and then climbs a tree, but more like a cat who walks quietly a few steps, then stops to observe his footprints. In Gathering Leaves he calls an arm full of soggy, dead, and colorless leaves a crop, as if he felt that this was all he had done for his life: planted trees only to harvest dead leaves. Is this what he thought of some of his words? After all, leaves can also mean pages.

Frost did not have an easy life by far, but I cannot think of any great poet who did. So maybe the two go hand in hand: tragedy and literary talent. I seem to remember hearing once that one cannot wring blood from a stone. Now I know that this was an expression meaning one cannot get money where that is no way to squeeze it out. However, the expression fits here also, meaning that one must be vulnerable to bleed.

Blooding is a rite of passage in many cultures, so it has significance here since poetry requires that one lives and experiences before one can write it. It seems, though, that Robert Frost had more than his share of sorrow, and he bled golden words. As alone as he may have felt many times in his life, he had an intimate understanding of people, so he never shut them out.

We could probably study Robert Frost’s poetry for years and still not know his entire meaning. After all, Frost believed that the reader had to do his part also. I am not sure if he ever read Rosenblatt, but he left us a lot in his poetry for us to interpret for ourselves. Yes, there is a tragedy in his life and it is reflected in his poetry. However, there is also the beauty of New England there and it also is reflected in his poetry. Some of his poetry even reflected on his poetry, as I think After Apple Picking did. For me, the poems are the apples: and the ones which “fall to the ground”, heavy and thick, go to the cider press.

“For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest, I desired.” (Frost 1930)

Lucky for us, his poem was not self-fulfilling. He lived on to write many more beautiful poems, all connecting life, and people, and nature.

• Cox, Sidney. A Swinger of Birches: A Portrait of Robert Frost. New York: New York University Press, 1957.
• Frost, Robert, 1923, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1923), p. 87. D-11 0397 Fisher Library.
• Frost, Robert, 1915, Good Hours, North of Boston, New York: Henry Holt and Co.
• Frost, Robert. Collected Poems of Robert Frost. New York: Henry Holt, 1930.
• Greenberg, Robert A., and James G. Hepburn, eds. Robert Frost, an Introduction. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1961
• Justin, Nancy Lewis, and John Zubizarreta, eds. The Robert Frost Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.
• Sutton, William A., ed. Newdick’s Season of Frost: An Interrupted Biography of Robert Frost /. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1976.
• Wilcox, J., and Jonathan N. Barron, eds. Roads Not Taken: Rereading Robert Frost. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000.
• Italian Sonnets: The Structure and Thematic Organization
• The Poem “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning
• The life of Robert Frost
• Robert Frost’s Fear Poetry
• Literature Studies: Mending Wall by Robert Frost
• T. S. Eliot’s “Hollow Men”
• The Theme of Hospitality on the Island of Ogygia with Calypso
• “Sylvia’s Death” by Anne Sexton
• Twentieth Century Literature: Derek Walcott and Lu Xun
• "The Fish" Poem by Elizabeth Bishop
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, October 23). How Robert Frost’s Poetry Reflected His Life. https://ivypanda.com/essays/how-robert-frosts-poetry-reflected-his-life/

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Essays on Robert Frost

The importance of writing an essay on robert frost.

Robert Frost is one of the most renowned poets in American literature, known for his ability to capture the beauty and complexity of rural life. Writing an essay on Robert Frost is important because it allows readers to delve deeper into his works and gain a better understanding of his themes, writing style, and impact on literature.

When writing an essay on Robert Frost, it is important to consider the following tips:

1. Research and analyze Frost's poems

It is important to thoroughly research and analyze Frost's poems to gain a comprehensive understanding of his writing style, themes, and symbolism. Pay close attention to the imagery, language, and structure used in his poems to uncover their deeper meanings.

2. Consider Frost's life and influences

Understanding Frost's life and the influences that shaped his writing is essential when writing an essay on him. Consider how his experiences, relationships, and the natural environment of New England influenced his poetry.

3. Explore Frost's themes and motifs

Frost's poems often explore themes such as nature, isolation, and the human experience. When writing an essay on Frost, it is crucial to delve into these themes and identify the recurring motifs in his work.

4. Provide critical analysis

Offering critical analysis of Frost's poems is essential to writing a compelling essay. Consider different interpretations of his work and provide evidence to support your analysis.

5. Reflect on Frost's legacy

Lastly, reflect on Frost's impact on American literature and his lasting legacy. Consider how his poetry continues to resonate with readers and how it has influenced subsequent generations of writers.

By following these tips, you can write a comprehensive and insightful essay on Robert Frost that offers a deeper understanding of his poetry and its significance.

Robert Frost is often celebrated for his vivid and evocative descriptions of nature in his poetry. In this essay, we will explore how Frost uses nature as a metaphor for human emotions and experiences, and how his portrayal of the natural world reflects his own worldview.

Frost's poems often depict the rural landscape and the lives of people who live in such environments. In this essay, we will examine how Frost's portrayal of rural life reflects his own experiences and beliefs, and how his poems shed light on the complexities of rural existence.

Many of Frost's poems explore the theme of isolation and alienation, depicting characters who feel disconnected from their surroundings or society. In this essay, we will analyze how Frost's use of language and imagery conveys the sense of loneliness and detachment experienced by his characters.

Frost's New England roots strongly influenced his poetry, as he frequently drew inspiration from the landscape and people of the region. In this essay, we will delve into how Frost's upbringing in New England shaped his poetic voice and the themes he explored in his work.

Frost's poetry is often associated with the modernist movement, and in this essay, we will compare and contrast his work with that of other modernist poets such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. We will explore how Frost's approach to language, form, and theme differs from his contemporaries, and how his work has contributed to the modernist literary tradition.

Many of Frost's poems reflect on the passage of time and the inevitability of change, often evoking a sense of nostalgia for the past. In this essay, we will examine how Frost's use of memory and nostalgia adds depth to his poetry, and how it contributes to his exploration of human experience.

Frost's poetry is rich with symbolism, as he often uses objects and images to convey deeper meanings and emotions. In this essay, we will analyze how Frost's use of symbolism adds layers of complexity to his poetry, and how it invites readers to engage with his work on a deeper level.

Death is a recurring theme in Frost's poetry, and in this essay, we will explore how he grapples with the concept of mortality in his work. We will examine how Frost's treatment of death reflects his own philosophical outlook, and how it resonates with readers on a universal level.

Frost's personal experiences, including his struggles with loss and grief, deeply influenced his poetry. In this essay, we will investigate how Frost's personal life shaped the themes and emotional resonance of his work, and how his poetry served as a means of grappling with his own experiences.

In this essay, we will consider Frost's lasting influence on American literature, and how his poetry continues to resonate with readers and writers today. We will explore how Frost's work has shaped the trajectory of poetry in America, and how his legacy endures as a vital part of the literary canon.

Mending Wall: The Tone Through The Walls of Poetry

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The Paradox of Barriers: Analyzing Robert Frost's "Mending Wall"

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How Robert Frost’s Poems Reflected His Life: Research Paper

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How The Life of Robert Frost is Depicted in His Works

Robert frost's use of literary devices in fire and ice, theme of choices in the road not taken by robert frost, analysis of robert frost’s use of literary devices in mending wall, analysis of imagery used in robert frost’s "to earthward", analysis of robert frost’s poem the road not taken, the complex interpretation of the mending wall, decisions and their consequences: analyzing "the road not taken", analysis of how writers present loss in out out and disabled, analysis of the forms of loss portrayed in disabled and out, out, vitality and eternal relevance of frost’s poetry, discovering the theme of death in ‘out, out’, construction and representation of identity in dead poets society and frost’s poetry, the use of imagery, figurative language and sound in "birches" by robert frost, the most of it: ambiguity and remoteness of nature, the main message in robert frost’s the road not taken, "out out" and "disabled": comparison of the poems, how authors convey their identity: shakespeare and robert frost, the literary analysis of robert frost’s sonnet design, comparative analysis of robert frost's and wilfred owen's poems.

Robert Lee Frost(1874-03-26)March 26, 1874San Francisco, California, US

January 29, 1963(1963-01-29) (aged 88)Boston, Massachusetts, US

Poet, playwright

• A Boy's Will and North of Boston
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
• Congressional Gold Medal

March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963

Robert Frost was an American poet who was much admired for his depictions of the rural life of New England, his command of American colloquial speech, and his realistic verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations.

Robert Frost’s most famous poems included “The Gift Outright,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Birches,” “Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Taken,” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. He most commonly investigated human contacts with the natural world.

He successfully brought into light the concept of soothing nature and its role in man's life. He expressed his ideas in his poems. His poems are very much an inspiration to modern times to this day. Many modern poets attempt to imitate his style, considering him a role model for writing prose and poetry.

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.” “We love the things we love for what they are.” “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”

Relevant topics

• William Shakespeare
• The Tempest
• Amelia Earhart
• Langston Hughes
• Leonardo Da Vinci
• Maya Angelou
• Benjamin Banneker
• Anne Bradstreet
• Cyrano De Bergerac

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