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LRE II

Poems of Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1874-1963), fully named Robert Lee Frost was an American poet, well
known for his admiration for the rural life and for his depiction of the ordinary in the life of
normal people. He attended to Harvard, worked in a mill and started working in a farm before
moving to England where he wrote his first books of poetry.

His family came in America from Devon, in the times of the colonies, drawing some
controversies over his ancestors. One of his ancestors was banned from Maine, for having a
sexual relationship with an Indian girl and one of them, in late seventeenth century, invited
over to a party a group of Indians, trying to kill them. Some of them escaped and came for
their revenge, this aspect being portrayed by Frost in one of his poems, Genealogical.

Talking about his poems, he had a lot to say about his work of art, even mentioning
himself that there are a lot of things to say about poetry and about his poetry, summarizing
everything to the metaphor, the only way in which you can say one thing to the other, one
word having a complete different meaning from it’s correspondent. Frost considers that the
core of every poem is the metaphor, every poem in its meaning being a new metaphor,
creation by creation. It is a metaphor or it is nothing. In the same way, every new poem that
create a new metaphor is nothing but the old metaphors, always.

All the written poems are a symbol of their own meaning, being understood in a
smaller or greater detail, revolving around their conclusion, being more important or not in
the intention of their receivers, keeping their intention strongly alive in their lines, even if the
primary idea was lost.

The sound that the poem makes in the one that matters, making a difference between
people that hear only vowels and consonants and people that hear its true meaning, its true
symbols hidden between the letters. Viewing by this point, the sound can be the diamond
hidden inside of the charcoal, the jewelry hidden in the deep.
Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Nothing Gold Can Stay is one of the most famous poems by Robert Frost, appearing
for the first time in New Hampshire, a collection that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1924. The
poem is a narrative that describes the rural image and the simplicity of nature, the
transformations that take place inside this mysterious universe.

As talking before of metaphors, e procedure that is extensively used by Frost, the

metaphors here are used to present the end of spring, a symbol for the ending of life itself and
for the ephemerality of everything that surrounds us. The decay and change of the nature is
presented through beautiful objects, as even flowers, the purest form of life, change their
form, eventually decaying and losing their glory.

The principal theme in this poem is the fading life of nature and by this, the fading of
life itself. By its cruel moral, the disappearing of nature’s beauty is compared with the
disappearance of life and the beauty that comes with it. Another hint to this is fading is that
one shouldn’t appreciate the beauty that is ephemeral, but the beauty that is universal. Even
the title suggests this, that “nothing gold can stay”, that nothing is delightful together. The
good and the beautiful will always come to an end.

Continuing with the poem, the nature is personified by Frost, especially to highlight
the symbol of universal life through this. It is even referred as “her”, another point in the use
of the metaphor, bringing the poem closer to the human conscience. Talking about symbols,
we can observe that “gold” is used to symbolize beauty, happiness and “nature” is used to
symbolize life. We can se that even the Garden of Eden is sinking in grief when the leaves
are falling, a metaphor that suggests that the decay of life is a point of sorrow even for the
Divine Power, as its beautiful creation comes to and end. The comparison between gold, as a
precious metal and golden elements of our life is somehow useless because, even if they are
spoiled in gold, after all, will fade away.

Nothing Gold Can Stay introduces us the idea of the short life that everything
beautiful that we belove in our life has, Frost trying to convince us to value every second that
we have left in our ephemeral life.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Fire and Ice is a poem that was written after the World War I, showing us two
scenarios for the Apocalypse, using the elements that are presented in the title. It is said that
there were two points of inspiration for this poem, one being Dante’s Inferno, in which a
journey to Hell is presented and the other one is a conversation that Frost had with an
astronomer about the possibility of an exploding sun, or the possibility of the same sun being
extinguished, giving the idea of fire and ice.

The first lines of the poem talk about how the humans disagree even when talking
about the end of the world, always being in a discrepancy with each other. Also, fire and ice,
being in extremities, can also be a symbol of this discrepancy.
 Frost shows us, by this poem, two types of destruction and, if we take a closer look,
two types of self destruction. The end is shown in two different perspectives, the apocalypse
of fire and the sharp death of ice. For a first time reader, the poem will seem as an ode to
some natural disasters but, for the well-known eye, this two disasters are symbols for the
human nature and destructive ability.

The artist places fire in the same context with desire, constructing an allegory of
these two terms, being an obvious evidence that the power that mankind can get will be
destructive for its own and also that this power that humans crave for is one of their biggest
aspiration in their whole period of life.

Working in the same way with ice, the allegory is almost the same, the symbols being
different. This time, the apocalyptic element of ice is compared with hate, believing that hate
can end the world more than once and being accumulated by individuals, it can spread much
more silently than the explosive nature of destruction, the explosive nature of fire.

The end of the poem send us to the judgement that these two elements aren’t at all
different from each other, both of them being a sign of a harmfully end, but with different
ways of acting and different perspectives, one more violently and one more silently,
depending of the nature habit and their burst of hate to each other and to their surroundings.

Dust of Snow

The way a crow

Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
 This poem appeared in the same volume as the first one, in New Hampshire, being a
poem that speaks about the poet himself and the power of a simple element that can change
the whole mood of one’s mind. A cold, sharp sprinkle of snow brings a surprise moment that
can change the whole parcourse of a single day and can change the whole ongoing of one’s
life.

Frost shows here also how nature can change and cheer people up, change their view
and their perspective. The simplicity is here the key element, as everything happens
extremely fast, though magnific in it’s own universal meaning. This simplicity is the most
important factor in one’s stressful and anxious day, as simple things cheer us up every time in
need.

The chilling of some snowflakes changed everything. They distracted the negative
thoughts, negative emotions and all the burdens that went on the artist’s shoulders all day
long. The surprisingly low temperature that was brought with the fall of the flakes made an
element of surprise, a changing in the mood, a changing in thoughts and a pull back to
normality, a spark of reality. This pull back was needed, as the artist was captive in the cell of
its own thoughts, cell that was broken by this spark. We can consider that the captivity of this
prison was made by the negative and harmful views and ideas that were made out of
nowhere, ideas that trapped the whole body in an state of idleness, similar with the emptiness
of one’s body, without a soul. But nothing held forever.

By this spark of reality, the “rued” day that held the artist captive and which gave him
the awful thoughts changed it’s course and with it’s course, the state of mind that the artist
had until the spark just by some cold, chilling flakes, a symbol for how the little things in our
life can bring the human back to it’s soul, to it’s state of mind.
Bibliography

Frost, Robert, ”The Poems of Robert Frost”, The Constant Symbol, The Modern
Library, 1946, pg. xv-xxiv.

Frost, Robert, ”Complete Poems of Robert Frost”, The Figure a Poem Makes,
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968, pg v-viii.

Gerber, Philip L.. "Robert Frost". Encyclopedia Britannica,

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Frost, Accessed 10 June 2021.