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The writing on the wall
*Click on "play" arrow below to hear Robert Frost recite!
Fire and Ice
(slower connections may have to wait a minute or 2)
Frost Warning (Favorite Frost Poems)
Heavy Frost (Frost-Related Links)
FROZEN TREATS
(Frozen Treats--a sampling of Robert Frost Quotes--Will ChangeRegularly)
There is the fear that we shan’t prove worthy in the eyes of someone who knows us at least as well as we know ourselves. That is the fear of God. And there is the fear of Man—fear that men won’t understand us and we shall be cut off from them.
Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.
I’m not confused, I’m just well mixed.
Forgive,
O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.
You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.
Heaven
gives its glimpses only to those
Not in position to look too close.
A poem . . . begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. . . . It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.
-Robert Frost |
Poetry Matters
I believe that poetry should be enjoyed by everyone, and need not be written in a complicated language only a select few can comprehend.
Interpretation most definitely has its place, but has all too often been misused and abused. I believe that symbolism in some poetry is good--poetry should allow for symbolism but it is not necessary. Sometimes "less is more", simplicity being the rule. A perfect example of this is Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Mr. Frost had been hounded to death about the "real meaning" of this poem, so much so that at one point he had said "I've been more bothered with that one than anybody has ever been with any poem in just pressing it with more than it should be pressed for. It means enough without being pressed." He wend on to say that the only thing the poem means is "It's all very nice here, but I must be getting home. There are chores to do." Another time when being pressed by a critic who believed the last three lines implied that Frost longed for the after-life of heaven, Mr. Frost simply shook his head saying "No, it only means I want to get the hell out of there."
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
(An ever-growing selection of Frost Favorites)
(Lodged; Fire and Ice; Acquainted With the Night; The Onset; The Need of Being Versed in Country Things; Desert Places)
Lodged
The rain to the wind said,
"You push and I'll pelt."
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged--though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Acquainted With the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain--and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
The Onset
Always the same, when on a fated night
At last the gathered snow lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,
I almost stumble looking up and round,
As one who overtaken by the end
Gives up his errand, and lets death descend
Upon him where he is, with nothing done
To evil, no important triumph won,
More than if life had never been begun.
Yet all the precedent is on my side:
I know that winter death has never tried
The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap
In long storms an undrifted four feet deep
As measured against maple, birch, and oak,
It cannot check the peeper's silver croak;
And I shall see the snow all go downhill
In water of a slender April rill
That flashes tail through last year's withered brake
And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake.
Nothing will be left white but here a birch,
And there a clump of houses with a church.
The Need of Being Versed In Country Things
The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood
Like a pistil after the petals go.
The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place's name.
No more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.
The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.
Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.
For them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.
A Brief Search of Robert Frost
Robert Frost, Poems and Biography
Robert Frost: Voices and Visions
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