Assignment on Robert Frost

[Sadia Mehjabeen]

                                                   Assignment


                                      Robert Frost as a nature poet


 Robert Frost is first and foremost a nature poet .He is a country poet whose business is to live with nature rather than through it. The importance and the use of the Frostian treatment of nature may be debatable but it has to be acknowledged that Frost’s poetry is a living tribute to his capacity for minute observation and accurate description. A snow fall, a spring thaw, a bending tree, a valley mist, a brook these are brought not to, but into the experience of a reader. The method is simple and can be analyzed. What he describes is never a spectacle only but an entire adventure with the sight and the act the emotional response comes naturally. The three fuses together and the experience come as a whole to us. It is an effect rare even in the best poetry. The simultaneous descript ion gives the reader almost a sensory instrument with which to share the perception; and since it a natural; anyway, for the reader to identify himself with the author, the result is to bring into the closer touch with this aloof poet than with many poets who directly seek such a companionship.

Frost’s theme in the nature poems are the usual themes of the century. His attitude to nature is modern because it is neither Epicurean nor renaissance. His attitude to nature is scientific in so far as he thinks that nature is indifferent to man and does not take notice of him. On the whole, he suggests, it should be taken as an little more in favor of man. His assuredly a modern attitude towards nature and he should be given his place as the twentieth century exemplar of the American tradition of interpreting nature.

We can find out many beautiful images from his poems like “Mending Wall”, “The death of the Hired Man”, “The Road not taken” etc. In the mending wall we find a beautiful images like ‘frozen-ground-wall, hunters, boulders, yelping dog , spring, pine and apple trees orchard, old-stone savage armed etc.

At last we can say that , throughout his nature poems one gets the feel of frost’s extraordinary intimacy with nature and his hypersensitive lyrical presentation of nature is often a treat to the senses.

[Shamim Ansary]

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 the 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.

[Shamim Ansary]

For biography & collection of poems......http://www.internal.org/Robert_Frost

[fatema_diu]

The  poem 'Home Burial' reminds us all the sad incidents of Frost's life.With all these tragedies how vigorously he kept on his poetic energy and journey.Four of his children died in his life time!

                                                   Personal Life

Robert Frost's personal life was plagued with grief and loss. In 1885 when Frost was 11, his father died of tuberculosis, leaving the family with just eight dollars. Frost's mother died of cancer in 1900. In 1920, Frost had to commit his younger sister Jeanie to a mental hospital, where she died nine years later. Mental illness apparently ran in Frost's family, as both he and his mother suffered from depression, and his daughter Irma was committed to a mental hospital in 1947. Frost's wife, Elinor, also experienced bouts of depression.[6]

Elinor and Robert Frost had six children: son Elliot (1896–1904, died of cholera); daughter Lesley Frost Ballantine (1899–1983); son Carol (1902–1940, committed suicide); daughter Irma (1903–1967); daughter Marjorie (1905–1934, died as a result of puerperal fever after childbirth); and daughter Elinor Bettina (died just three days after her birth in 1907). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Frost's wife, who had heart problems throughout her life, developed breast cancer in 1937, and died of heart failure in 1938.[6]