Poems by 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 America. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech,^[2] Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution."^[3] He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont.

STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING

Area of NIU Campus

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 dark 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

Stevenson Towers' Yard

A Soldier

He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled

That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust

But still lies pointed as it plowed the dust

If we who sight along it around the world

See nothing worthy to have been its mark

It is because like men we look too near

Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere

Our missiles always make too short an arc

They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect

The curve of earth, and striking, break their own

They make us cringe for metal-point on stone

But this we know, the obstacle that checked

And tripped the body, shot the spirit on

Further than target ever showed or shone

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat, and white

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth

Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth

Assorted characters of death and blight

Mixed ready to begin the morning right

Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth

A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth

And dead wings carried like a paper kite

What had that flower to do with being white

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

What brought the kindred spider to that height

Then steered the white moth thither in the right?

What but the design of darkness to appall?

If design governs in a thing so small.

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it

And spills the upper boulders in the sun

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast

The work of hunters is another thing

I Have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone

But they would have the rabbit it out of hiding

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean

No one has seen them made or heard them made  

But at spring mending-time we find them there

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again

We keep the wall between us as we go

To each the  boulders that have fallen to each

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance

Stay where you are until our backs are turned!

We wear out fingers rough with handling them

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game

One on a side. It comes to little more

There where it is we do not need the wall

He is all pine and I am apple orchard

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him

He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a nation in his head:

Why do they make good neighbors

Where there are cows?but here there are no cows

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. ‘i could say “Elves” to him

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed

He moves in darkness as it seems to me

Not of woods only and the shade of trees

He will not  go behind his father’s saying

And he likes having thought of it so well

H says again ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.

References

1. "Robert Frost". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 18 February 2015 
2.  "Robert Frost". Encyclopædia Britannica (Online ed.). 2008. Retrieved 2008-12-21.
 3. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jean C. Stine, Bridget Broderick, and Daniel G. Marowski. Vol. 26. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. p110