ROBERT FROST (POEMS)

Robert Lee Frost  (1874 – 1963)  was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.

 

His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. 

 

He spent his first 40 years as an unknown. He exploded on the scene after returning from England at the beginning of the first World War.

 

Special guest at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, Frost became a poetic force and the unofficial “poet laureate” of the United States. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

RobertFrost

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

 

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.

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-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

THE MOST OF IT

 

He thought he kept the universe alone;

For all the voice in answer he could wake

Was but the mocking echo of his own

 

From some tree–hidden cliff across the lake.

Some morning from the boulder–broken beach

He would cry out on life, that what it wants

 

Is not its own love back in copy speech,

But counter–love, original response.

And nothing ever came of what he cried

 

Unless it was the embodiment that crashed

In the cliff's talus on the other side,

And then in the far distant water splashed,

 

But after a time allowed for it to swim,

Instead of proving human when it neared

And someone else additional to him,

 

As a great buck it powerfully appeared,

Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,

And landed pouring like a waterfall,

 

And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,

And forced the underbrush—and that was all.