Robert Frost as a Nature Poet
Robert Frost the most widely admired and highly honoured American poet of the 20th century, achieving over the course of his long career a level of fame and popularity that few other poets have ever known. Robert Frost has many themes in his poetry. One of the main themes that is always repeated, is nature. He always discusses how beautiful nature is or how destructive it can be. Frost always discusses nature in his poems. We come across many characteristics of Frost as a poet of Nature, from a study of his poetry.
Like Wordsworth, Frost is found to be a poet of Nature of the poems is the north of Boston. The hills, dales, rivers and forests, flowers, and trees and plants, birds, beasts and even insects are accurately and succinctly described in his poems. In regard to this aspect of his poems Schneider says, “…the descriptive power of Mr. Frost is to me the most wonderful thin in his poetry. A snowfall, a spring thaw, a bending tree, a valley mist a brook, these are brought not to, but into, the experience of the reader.â€
Frost once said: “Literature begins with geography.†This statement can easily justify frost’s interest in nature as a contested field of his poetic setting. He saw nature as a storehouse of analogy and symbol, announcing, “I’m always saying something that’s just the edge of something moreâ€, but he had little faith in religious dogma of speculative thought, which distinguishes him from the Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth, and also from the Transcendentalists, especially Emerson.
In Frost’s poetry, nature is more a setting than an element because he pits man against nature to demonstrate the harsh realities of our everyday human life, and to reflect deep moral uncertainties of our mind. He does not present nature alone; he presents nature along with a human being in the background, who stands there to find his opposite of enemy. Frost rightly said: “I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems.â€
In the poems “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,†“Once by the Pacific,†"The Most of it," “The Road Not Taken,†“Never again Would Bird’s Song Be the Same,†and “Desert Places.†Frost uses nature as figures of speech to establish the overall themes of the poems. The use of nature in Frost’s poems is used in many ways to express the overall feeling and meaning of his entire poems.
“Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening†there is a lot of nature expresses. Frost’s very first sentence already talks about the woods. Whose woods these are I think I know. Also, in the poem he states that the narrator likes to sit and watch the snow. He is also a nature lover. In the second stanza Frost refers back to the woods. He must also like ice, because he brings ice and cold up a lot in his poems. Once again Frost brings ice up when he mentions flake and cold wind. Then in the last stanza Frost mentions woods again. Even though the narrator has a long way to go he always has enough time to stop and watch the small thing in nature in detail.
Second, in the poem “Once by the Pacific†there is a lot of nature expressed. Frost changes his natures view from woods to water. In this poem he now talks about water. The reader can see how powerful the water is when it eats away at the cliff. The shore was lucky by being backed by the cliff. Once again Frost is discussing water which goes back to stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by stating the water because there is water in this poem with snow Frost keeps bringing up water and snow. Water is a sign of being powerful; Frost must love having power by showing it with water. He also shows how powerful water is by tearing away at the cliff. Third, in the poem
"The Most of it" there is also a lot of nature being expressed. You can see in this poem Frost refers back to the cliff which is in the fifth sentence of the poem, ‘Some morning from the boulder broken beach’. He also talks about the water again and how powerful it is. Frost loves to write about water and how powerful it is in this poem and in many others of his. Frost always expresses nature in his poems. The reader can tell that Frost does love water. He also likes the power of it and expressing to through nature. He also brings up other points of nature, but it always has water. The water is always breaking down cliffs, beaches and boulders. Frost's poems are similar but are also very different, but they all have nature in them.
So, after all these discussion , Robert Frost shows his love for all objects of Nature, its flora and fauna, its birds and beasts, and draws realistic picture of Nature. It is a picture of beauty and joy, as well as of cruelty and horror.
