Robert Frost, in full Robert Lee Frost, (born

March 26, 1874, San Francisco, California, U.S.—died January 29, 1963, Boston,
Massachusetts), American poet who was much admired for his depictions of the rural
life of New England, his command of American colloquial speech, and his realistic verse
portraying ordinary people in everyday situations.

Frost’s father, William Prescott Frost, Jr., was a journalist with ambitions of establishing
a career in California, and in 1873 he and his wife moved to San Francisco. Her
husband’s untimely death from tuberculosis in 1885 prompted Isabelle Moodie Frost to
take her two children, Robert and Jeanie, to Lawrence, Massachusetts, where they were
taken in by the children’s paternal grandparents. While their mother taught at a variety
of schools in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Robert and Jeanie grew up in
Lawrence, and Robert graduated from high school in 1892. A top student in his class, he
shared valedictorian honours with Elinor White, with whom he had already fallen in love.

By 1911 Frost was fighting against discouragement. Poetry had always been considered
a young person’s game, but Frost, who was nearly 40 years old, had not published a
single book of poems and had seen just a handful appear in magazines. In 1911
ownership of the Derry farm passed to Frost. A momentous decision was made: to sell
the farm and use the proceeds to make a radical new start in London, where publishers
were perceived to be more receptive to new talent. Accordingly, in August 1912 the
Frost family sailed across the Atlantic to England. Frost carried with him sheaves of
verses he had written but not gotten into print. English publishers in London did indeed
prove more receptive to innovative verse, and, through his own vigorous efforts and
those of the expatriate American poet Ezra Pound, Frost within a year had published A
Boy’s Will (1913). From this first book, such poems as “Storm Fear,” “The Tuft of
Flowers,” and “Mowing” became standard anthology pieces.

A Boy’s Will was followed in 1914 by a second collection, North of Boston, that
introduced some of the most popular poems in all of Frost’s work, among them
“Mending Wall,” “The Death of the Hired Man,” “Home Burial,” and “After Apple-Picking.”
In London, Frost’s name was frequently mentioned by those who followed the course of
modern literature, and soon American visitors were returning home with news of this
unknown poet who was causing a sensation abroad. The Boston poet Amy Lowell
traveled to England in 1914, and in the bookstores there she encountered Frost’s work.
Taking his books home to America, Lowell then began a campaign to locate an
American publisher for them, meanwhile writing her own laudatory review of North of
Boston.

Legacy

Frost was the most widely admired and highly honoured American poet of the 20th
century. Amy Lowell thought he had overstressed the dark aspects of New England life,
but Frost’s later flood of more uniformly optimistic verses made that view seem
antiquated. Louis Untermeyer’s judgment that the dramatic poems in North of Boston
were the most authentic and powerful of their kind ever produced by an American has
only been confirmed by later opinions. Gradually, Frost’s name ceased to be linked
solely with New England, and he gained broad acceptance as a national poet.

It is true that certain criticisms of Frost have never been wholly refuted, one being that
he was overly interested in the past, another that he was too little concerned with the
present and future of American society. Those who criticize Frost’s detachment from
the “modern” emphasize the undeniable absence in his poems of meaningful references
to the modern realities of industrialization, urbanization, and the concentration of
wealth, or to such familiar items as radios, motion pictures, automobiles, factories, or
skyscrapers. The poet has been viewed as a singer of sweet nostalgia and a social and
political conservative who was content to sigh for the good things of the past.
Such views have failed to gain general acceptance, however, in the face of the
universality of Frost’s themes, the emotional authenticity of his voice, and the austere
technical brilliance of his verse. Frost was often able to endow his rural imagery with a
larger symbolic or metaphysical significance, and his best poems transcend the
immediate realities of their subject matter to illuminate the unique blend of tragic
endurance, stoicism, and tenacious affirmation that marked his outlook on life. Over his
long career, Frost succeeded in lodging more than a few poems where, as he put it, they
would be “hard to get rid of,” among them “The Road Not Taken” (published in 1915,
with its meaning disputed ever since). He can be said to have lodged himself just as
solidly in the affections of his fellow Americans. For thousands he remains the only
recent poet worth reading and the only one who matters.

The Death of the Hired Man

Robert Frost - 1874-1963

Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table

Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,

She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage

To meet him in the doorway with the news

And put him on his guard. “Silas is back.”

She pushed him outward with her through the door

And shut it after her. “Be kind,” she said.

She took the market things from Warren’s arms

And set them on the porch, then drew him down

To sit beside her on the wooden steps.

“When was I ever anything but kind to him?

But I’ll not have the fellow back,” he said.

“I told him so last haying, didn’t I?

‘If he left then,’ I said, ‘that ended it.’

What good is he? Who else will harbour him

At his age for the little he can do?

What help he is there’s no depending on.

Off he goes always when I need him most.

‘He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,

Enough at least to buy tobacco with,

So he won’t have to beg and be beholden.’

‘All right,’ I say, ‘I can’t afford to pay

Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.’

‘Someone else can.’ ‘Then someone else will have to.’

I shouldn’t mind his bettering himself

If that was what it was. You can be certain,

When he begins like that, there’s someone at him

Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,—

In haying time, when any help is scarce.

In winter he comes back to us. I’m done.”

“Sh! not so loud: he’ll hear you,” Mary said.

“I want him to: he’ll have to soon or late.”

“He’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove.

When I came up from Rowe’s I found him here,

Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,

A miserable sight, and frightening, too—

You needn’t smile—I didn’t recognise him—

I wasn’t looking for him—and he’s changed.

Wait till you see.”

“Where did you say he’d been?”

“He didn’t say. I dragged him to the house,

And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.

I tried to make him talk about his travels.

Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off.”

“What did he say? Did he say anything?”

“But little.”

“Anything? Mary, confess

He said he’d come to ditch the meadow for me.”

“Warren!”

“But did he? I just want to know.”

“Of course he did. What would you have him say?

Surely you wouldn’t grudge the poor old man

Some humble way to save his self-respect.

He added, if you really care to know,

He meant to clear the upper pasture, too.

That sounds like something you have heard before?

Warren, I wish you could have heard the way

He jumbled everything. I stopped to look

Two or three times—he made me feel so queer—

To see if he was talking in his sleep.

He ran on Harold Wilson—you remember—

The boy you had in haying four years since.

He’s finished school, and teaching in his college.

Silas declares you’ll have to get him back.

He says they two will make a team for work:

Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!

The way he mixed that in with other things.

He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft

On education—you know how they fought

All through July under the blazing sun,

Silas up on the cart to build the load,

Harold along beside to pitch it on.”

“Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot.”

“Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.

You wouldn’t think they would. How some things linger!

Harold’s young college boy’s assurance piqued him.

After so many years he still keeps finding

Good arguments he sees he might have used.

I sympathise. I know just how it feels

To think of the right thing to say too late.

Harold’s associated in his mind with Latin.

He asked me what I thought of Harold’s saying

He studied Latin like the violin

Because he liked it—that an argument!

He said he couldn’t make the boy believe

He could find water with a hazel prong—

Which showed how much good school had ever done him.

He wanted to go over that. But most of all

He thinks if he could have another chance

To teach him how to build a load of hay——”

“I know, that’s Silas’ one accomplishment.

He bundles every forkful in its place,

And tags and numbers it for future reference,

So he can find and easily dislodge it

In the unloading. Silas does that well.

He takes it out in bunches like big birds’ nests.

You never see him standing on the hay

He’s trying to lift, straining to lift himself.”

“He thinks if he could teach him that, he’d be

Some good perhaps to someone in the world.

He hates to see a boy the fool of books.

Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,

And nothing to look backward to with pride,

And nothing to look forward to with hope,

So now and never any different.”

Part of a moon was falling down the west,

Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.

Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw

And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand

Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,

Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,

As if she played unheard some tenderness

That wrought on him beside her in the night.

“Warren,” she said, “he has come home to die:

You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.”

“Home,” he mocked gently.

“Yes, what else but home?

It all depends on what you mean by home.

Of course he’s nothing to us, any more

Than was the hound that came a stranger to us

Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.”

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in.”

“I should have called it

Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

Warren leaned out and took a step or two,

Picked up a little stick, and brought it back

And broke it in his hand and tossed it by.

“Silas has better claim on us you think

Than on his brother? Thirteen little miles

As the road winds would bring him to his door.

Silas has walked that far no doubt to-day.

Why didn’t he go there? His brother’s rich,

A somebody—director in the bank.”

“He never told us that.”

“We know it though.”

“I think his brother ought to help, of course.

I’ll see to that if there is need. He ought of right

To take him in, and might be willing to—

He may be better than appearances.

But have some pity on Silas. Do you think

If he’d had any pride in claiming kin

Or anything he looked for from his brother,

He’d keep so still about him all this time?”

“I wonder what’s between them.”

“I can tell you.

Silas is what he is—we wouldn’t mind him—

But just the kind that kinsfolk can’t abide.

He never did a thing so very bad.

He don’t know why he isn’t quite as good

As anybody. Worthless though he is,

He won't be made ashamed to please his brother.”

“I can’t think Si ever hurt anyone.”

“No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay

And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back.

He wouldn’t let me put him on the lounge.

You must go in and see what you can do.

I made the bed up for him there to-night.

You’ll be surprised at him—how much he’s broken.

His working days are done; I’m sure of it.”

“I’d not be in a hurry to say that.”

“I haven’t been. Go, look, see for yourself.

But, Warren, please remember how it is:

He’s come to help you ditch the meadow.

He has a plan. You mustn’t laugh at him.

He may not speak of it, and then he may.

I’ll sit and see if that small sailing cloud

Will hit or miss the moon.”

It hit the moon.

Then there were three there, making a dim row,

The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.

Warren returned—too soon, it seemed to her,

Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.

“Warren,” she questioned.

“Dead,” was all he answered.

The Death of The Hired Man Analysis

The Death of The Hired Man poem is primarily a dialogue between the husband and the wife on
the issue of the returning farmhand. But we see some descriptive and narrative portions as
well. Frost has mastered the art of making the verse sound like a conversation between
individuals. There is a possibility that Frost was trying to portray the verbal characteristics of the
people living around him. Throughout the dialogue between the couple, there is the constant
mention of the “hired man” i.e. Silas, who remains the character around whom the whole
conversation is built, and whose arrival and demise form central events in the poem. Silas
happens to be a disloyal farm servant, who has repeatedly left the service of Warren during the
most crucial moments over the past many years. Naturally, Warren’s attitude towards the farm
worker is nothing close to being mild and receptive, but on the contrary, cold and
untrustworthy. Silas has thus taken advantage of the forgiving nature of his employers on many
occasions, but consequently, has been taken back into service. We get to know the innate
characteristics of Warren and Mary, as the poem continues to reveal us the background to the
current situation.

Warren simply wants to prevent someone from taking advantage of their goodness. We are
sure about the fact that Warren is a good man since he has already given Silas many chances to
prove his faithfulness. But in each occasion, it has been Silas who has broken faith. On the
contrary, Mary is charitable unconditionally. The moment Mary catches sight of her husband,
she tells him to “be kind”, especially since she has the feeling that Silas’s end is near.

Silas is absent from the stage. He is the topic of discussion without having to appear on the
conversational plane. We get to know about this opportunist, vagabond-like helper in the farm,
through the information provided to us by the couple. It is revealed that Silas suffers from a
terrible bout of inferiority complex. There is the mention of an event which took place in the
previous summer at Warren’s farm when a boy named Harold was working alongside Silas. It is
recollected how the self-respect of Silas was repeatedly damaged by the words of a mere
college-going young boy. He is uneducated, friendless, and is heavily bothered about his pride
and self-esteem, and in order to protect it, he refrains from approaching his well-to-do brother,
who is rich and well-known in the place where they all live. Also, he does not want to make it
obvious that he is seeking charity from the kind couple. So, Silas declares his intent to help
Warren by ‘ditching the upper meadow and clearing the upper pasture’. By camouflaging his
real intent, Silas hopes to safeguard the remnants of his self-worth. Eventually, the wife wins
over her not-so-stubborn husband and forces him to consider for a place at his farm for Silas.

The Death of The Hired Man Theme and Symbolism

“The Death of the Hired Man” has more than one thematic undertone. On one level, there is
the ever-present conflict between the belief-system of Warren and Mary vis-a-vis the hired
man i.e. Silas. The couple faces a moral conundrum while dealing with the situation presented
by the return of the disloyal laborer. How should they behave with the man who repeatedly
deserts the person he is supposed to be loyal to? What can be the approach to deal with such a
person? Warren, for one, feels no legal obligation to take Silas back into his fold. He had even
warned Silas the last time he worked for him, telling him that it would be the last time he would
betray his trust and that there would not be another chance for redemption if he chose to leave
the farm again, an action we know Silas committed yet again. This leaves Warren with little
choice but to act sternly in order to uphold his decision and protect the honor of his
declaration. So it is fairly simple for Warren to act thoroughly unconcerned about the man at
the outset of the poem.

Since Silas has been disloyal to them many times, why should they be the ones helping him
when he has fallen on dire straits? They are not related to him like his well-to-do brother. If
someone is to help Silas, it has to be someone related to him by blood and certainly not them.
These are some of the moral dilemmas at play when both of them speak. At another instance,
Warren realizes that Silas has no productive value any further when he gets to know from his
wife about the physical condition of his ex-employee. Accepting to let him stay at his house
would act as an added burden on his resources without adding any overall value whatsoever.
Added to this, Silas’s prese