Robert Frost

(1874-1963)
Early years


He was born in San Francisco on March 1874.
His mother Isabelle Moodie was a schoolteacher
and his father William Prescott Frost , Jr. , a
journalist and local politician.
He moved to New England at the age of eleven
and became interested in reading and writing
poetry during his high school years in Lawrence,
Massachusetts.
He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and
later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal
degree.


Adult years
He worked as a teacher, cobbler and editor of the
Lawrence Sentinel.
His first professional poem, "My Butterfly(1894).
In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who
became a major inspiration in his poetry until her
death in 1938.
The couple moved to England in 1912 and it was
abroad that Frost met and was influenced by
contemporary British poets.

He returned to the United States in 1915 and
published two full-length collections, A Boy's
Will and North of Boston.

His collections include New Hampshire (1923,
Pulitzer Prize), Collected Poems (1930, Pulitzer
Prize), A Further Range (1936, Pulitzer Prize), and A
Witness Tree (1942, Pulitzer Prize).

His work is principally associated with the life and
landscape of New England.

He used colloquial language, familiar rhythms, and
common symbols to express both its pastoral ideals
and its dark complexities.



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





Rhyme Scheme


a
b
a
a
b

a
b
a
a
b

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked 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.

a
b
a
a
b
a
b
a
a
b

Content
The speaker is trying to make a decision about
which road to take.
He takes the less travelled, but then he realizes
that both paths were really about the same
Meditation about the possible differences between
the two roads.
At the end he cannot know how his choice will
affect his future, until after he has lived it
There is no right path.


Sound Devices
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,


Alliteration
/ t/
/d/
/w/
/s/
/k/
/b/
/l/

//
/p/
/b/
/w/

Consonance
/d/
/t/
//
/r/

/n/
/r/
/t/
//


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.
Alliteration
/b/
/l/
/h/
/d/
/w/
/t/
//
/s/
/d/

Consonance
/t/
//
/z/



/s/
/z/
/d/

Assonance

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,

/o/
/e/
//
//
//



/e/
//

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked 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.
/i:/
//
/a:/
//




//
/e/
/i/
//

Robert Frost recited his poem "The Gift
Outright" at President Kennedy's inauguration.
(1961)
The Gift Outright
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become. repetition
catalogue
repetition
Content
The American story of colonialism, freedom,
westward expansion.
Americans could not draw a national identity
because they were still tied to England.
The clash between the Old World and The New
World
The deed of gift was many deeds of war= A
discussion of the Revolutionary War and remorse
that the battle over the land caused so many
deaths.
The quest to develop an American culture.