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    The Road Not Taken and Other Poems
    The Road Not Taken and Other Poems
    The Road Not Taken and Other Poems
    Ebook213 pages2 hours

    The Road Not Taken and Other Poems

    By Robert Frost

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    Winner of four Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry, Robert Frost is best remembered for his depictions of early 20th century rural New England life and for his command of American colloquial speech. Criticized by some as being out of touch with the Modernist movement in poetry exemplified by contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot and E. E. Cummings, it is probably in fact his adherence to traditionalism that so endeared him to his fans. Literary critic Randall Jarrell described Frost as one of “the greatest of the American poets of [the 20th] century” whose works were serious and honest and although often dealt with rather simple subjects were underlaid with an intense thematic complexity. For example the title poem of this collection “The Road Not Taken” is often interpreted as one about regret over choices not made and exemplifying the benefit of not following the crowd. Frost implied that it is however a comment about indecision and finding meaning in inconsequential decisions. Collected together here are three of Frost’s earliest collections, “A Boy’s Will”, first published in 1913, “North of Boston”, first published in 1914, and “Mountain Interval”, first published in 1916.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2017
    ISBN9781420955187
    The Road Not Taken and Other Poems
    Author

    Robert Frost

    Robert Frost (1874–1963) was a poet who was much admired for his depictions of rural life in New England, command of American colloquial speech, and realistic verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations.

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    Reviews for The Road Not Taken and Other Poems

    4/5

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    • 2/5
      I'm utterly indifferent to his subject matter, and his poems evoke no genuine feeling from me.
    • 2/5
      I'm sorry, but I just don't like Robert Frost that much. Aside from The Road Not Taken and Mending Wall, I don't care for his poetry.
    • 4/5
      Favorites in this collection include "The Road Not Taken," "A Patch of Old Snow," and "Birches."
    • 4/5
      Frost is one of the few great poets who can write narrative verse, including conversation, and have it work both as story and as verse. This collection is held together by a theme of the relationship between humans, each other, and the natural world. There is cruelty, often unintentional or unknowing. But there is beauty in the intersection and the conflicts that result.

      "The Road Not Taken" leaves its ambiguous ending hanging there: is it celebration, regret, or is it a facile narrator missing his own point? And in "Snow" the complexities of human feelings swirl with the storm that challenges Meserve to heroism or is it foolishness, or is it love for his wife?

      Frost has often been underestimated, more by his fans than by some post-modernists who seem to loathe his writing. This collection bears rereading and savoring for its depths.

    Book preview

    The Road Not Taken and Other Poems - Robert Frost

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    THE ROAD NOT TAKEN AND OTHER POEMS

    By ROBERT FROST

    The Road Not Taken and Other Poems

    By Robert Frost

    Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5517-0

    eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5518-7

    This edition copyright © 2017. Digireads.com Publishing.

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

    Cover Image: a detail of The Woods of Famars, c. 1887 (oil on canvas), Henri-Joseph Harpignies (1819-1916) / Private Collection / Photo © Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images.

    Please visit www.digireads.com

    CONTENTS

    A BOY’S WILL

    Into My Own

    Ghost House

    My November Guest

    Love and a Question

    A Late Walk

    Stars

    Storm Fear

    Wind and Window Flower

    To the Thawing Wind

    A Prayer in Spring

    Flower-gathering

    Rose Pogonias

    Asking for Roses

    Waiting

    In a Vale

    A Dream Pang

    In Neglect

    The Vantage Point

    Mowing

    Going for Water

    Revelation

    The Trial by Existence

    In Equal Sacrifice

    The Tuft of Flowers

    Spoils of the Dead

    Pan with Us

    The Demiurge’s Laugh

    Now Close the Windows

    A Line-Storm Song

    October

    My Butterfly

    Reluctance

    NORTH OF BOSTON

    The Pasture

    Mending Wall

    The Death of the Hired Man

    The Mountain

    A Hundred Collars

    Home Burial

    The Black Cottage

    Blueberries

    A Servant to Servants

    After Apple-picking

    The Code

    The Generations of Men

    The Housekeeper

    The Fear

    The Self-seeker

    The Wood-pile

    Good Hours

    MOUNTAIN INTERVAL

    The Road Not Taken

    Christmas Trees

    An Old Man’s Winter Night

    A Patch of Old Snow

    In The Home Stretch

    The Telephone

    Meeting and Passing

    Hyla Brook

    The Oven Bird

    Bond and Free

    Birches

    Pea Brush

    Putting in the Seed

    A Time to Talk

    The Cow in Apple Time

    An Encounter

    Range-Finding

    The Hill Wife

    The Bonfire

    A Girl’s Garden

    The Exposed Nest

    Out, out—

    Brown’s Descent

    The Gum-Gatherer

    The Line-Gang

    The Vanishing Red

    Snow

    The Sound of the Trees

    A BOY’S WILL

    Into My Own

    One of my wishes is that those dark trees,

    So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,

    Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,

    But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

    I should not be withheld but that some day

    Into their vastness I should steal away,

    Fearless of ever finding open land,

    Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

    I do not see why I should e’er turn back,

    Or those should not set forth upon my track

    To overtake me, who should miss me here

    And long to know if still I held them dear.

    They would not find me changed from him they knew—

    Only more sure of all I thought was true.

    Ghost House

    I dwell in a lonely house I know

    That vanished many a summer ago,

    And left no trace but the cellar walls,

    And a cellar in which the daylight falls,

    And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

    O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield

    The woods come back to the mowing field;

    The orchard tree has grown one copse

    Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;

    The footpath down to the well is healed.

    I dwell with a strangely aching heart

    In that vanished abode there far apart

    On that disused and forgotten road

    That has no dust-bath now for the toad.

    Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

    The whippoorwill is coming to shout

    And hush and cluck and flutter about:

    I hear him begin far enough away

    Full many a time to say his say

    Before he arrives to say it out.

    It is under the small, dim, summer star.

    I know not who these mute folk are

    Who share the unlit place with me—

    Those stones out under the low-limbed tree

    Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

    They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,

    Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—

    With none among them that ever sings,

    And yet, in view of how many things,

    As sweet companions as might be had.

    My November Guest

    My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,

    Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

    Are beautiful as days can be;

    She loves the bare, the withered tree;

    She walks the sodden pasture lane.

    Her pleasure will not let me stay.

    She talks and I am fain to list:

    She’s glad the birds are gone away,

    She’s glad her simple worsted gray

    Is silver now with clinging mist.

    The desolate, deserted trees,

    The faded earth, the heavy sky,

    The beauties she so truly sees,

    She thinks I have no eye for these,

    And vexes me for reason why.

    Not yesterday I learned to know

    The love of bare November days

    Before the coming of the snow,

    But it were vain to tell her so,

    And they are better for her praise.

    Love and a Question

    A stranger came to the door at eve,

    And he spoke the bridegroom fair.

    He bore a green-white stick in his hand,

    And, for all burden, care.

    He asked with the eyes more than the lips

    For a shelter for the night,

    And he turned and looked at the road afar

    Without a window light.

    The bridegroom came forth into the porch

    With, ‘Let us look at the sky,

    And question what of the night to be,

    Stranger, you and I.’

    The woodbine leaves littered the yard,

    The woodbine berries were blue,

    Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;

    ‘Stranger, I wish I knew.’

    Within, the bride in the dusk alone

    Bent over the open fire,

    Her face rose-red with the glowing coal

    And the thought of the heart’s desire.

    The bridegroom looked at the weary road,

    Yet saw but her within,

    And wished her heart in a case of gold

    And pinned with a silver pin.

    The bridegroom thought it little to give

    A dole of bread, a purse,

    A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God,

    Or for the rich a curse;

    But whether or not a man was asked

    To mar the love of two

    By harboring woe in the bridal house,

    The bridegroom wished he knew.

    A Late Walk

    When I go up through the mowing field,

    The headless aftermath,

    Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,

    Half closes the garden path.

    And when I come to the garden ground,

    The whir of sober birds

    Up from the tangle of withered weeds

    Is sadder than any words.

    A tree beside the wall stands bare,

    But a leaf that lingered brown,

    Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,

    Comes softly rattling down.

    I end not far from my going forth

    By picking the faded blue

    Of the last remaining aster flower

    To carry again to you.

    Stars

    How countlessly they congregate

    O’er our tumultuous snow,

    Which flows in shapes as tall as trees

    When wintry winds do blow!—

    As if with keenness for our fate,

    Our faltering few steps on

    To white rest, and a place of rest

    Invisible at dawn,—

    And yet with neither love nor hate,

    Those stars like some snow-white

    Minerva’s snow-white marble eyes

    Without the gift of sight.

    Storm Fear

    When the wind works against us in the dark,

    And pelts with snow

    The lowest chamber window on the east,

    And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,

    The beast,

    ‘Come out! Come out!’—

    It costs no inward struggle not to go,

    Ah, no!

    I count our strength,

    Two and a child,

    Those of us not asleep subdued to mark

    How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,—

    How drifts are piled,

    Dooryard and road ungraded,

    Till even the comforting barn grows far away

    And my heart owns a doubt

    Whether ’tis in us to arise with day

    And save ourselves unaided.

    Wind and Window Flower

    Lovers, forget your love,

    And list to the love of these,

    She a window flower,

    And he a winter breeze.

    When the frosty window veil

    Was melted down at noon,

    And the cagèd yellow bird

    Hung over her in tune,

    He marked her through the pane,

    He could not help but mark,

    And only passed her by,

    To come again at dark.

    He was a winter wind,

    Concerned with ice and snow,

    Dead weeds and unmated birds,

    And little of love could know.

    But he sighed upon the sill,

    He gave the sash a shake,

    As witness all within

    Who lay that night awake.

    Perchance he half prevailed

    To win her for the flight

    From the firelit looking-glass

    And warm stove-window light.

    But the flower leaned aside

    And thought of naught to say,

    And morning found the breeze

    A hundred miles away.

    To the Thawing Wind

    Come with rain, O loud Southwester!

    Bring the singer, bring the nester;

    Give the buried flower a dream;

    Make the settled snow-bank steam;

    Find the brown beneath the white;

    But whate’er you do to-night,

    Bathe my window, make it flow,

    Melt it as the ices go;

    Melt the glass and leave the sticks

    Like a hermit’s crucifix;

    Burst into my narrow stall;

    Swing the picture on the wall;

    Run the rattling pages o’er;

    Scatter poems on the floor;

    Turn the poet out of door.

    A Prayer in Spring

    Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;

    And give us not to think so far away

    As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

    All simply in the springing of the year.

    Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,

    Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;

    And make us happy in the happy bees,

    The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

    And make us happy in the darting bird

    That suddenly above the bees is heard,

    The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,

    And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

    For this is love and nothing else is love,

    The which it is reserved for God above

    To sanctify to what far ends He will,

    But which it only needs that we fulfil.

    Flower-gathering

    I left you in the morning,

    And in the morning

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