Robert Frost-Farmer Teacher and Poet

Julie Brown

Eng 113

Y. Latif

March 4, 2002

Robert Frost-Farmer, Teacher, and Poet

Robert Lee Frost was not only a great poet, he was also a farmer and teacher to many. He was born March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California. He was the son of a politician named William Prescott Frost, Jr., and a schoolteacher named Isabelle Moodie. Frost's father passed away on May 5, 1885 when Frost was eleven, leaving his family with no financial support.

Robert Frost attended high school, where he excelled, from 1888-1892 where he met his future wife, Elinor Miriam White. Frost wrote his first poem in 1890 while sitting at his grandmother's kitchen table, a poem for Elinor, which was printed in the Lawrence High School Bulletin. Both he and Elinor were co-valedictorians their graduating year. Frost knew he wanted to be a teacher like his mother.

Frost went off to Dartmouth College, where he spent a few months, and then left without notifying the school. He quit school, and started to work in a textile mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He also taught Latin in his mother's school in Methuen, Massachusetts. While he was working and teaching, Elinor was attending college. In 1895, after she obtained a degree, they got married. They both were teachers. At this time Frost still did not have a degree. In 1897 he attended Harvard University for 2 years, again leaving without a degree. It was apparent college was not for him, and he never returned to college as a student. Although Frost was concerned about college, he became a family man. In September of 1896, Frost had his first son, Eliot, who later died

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in 1909. Frost had four other children, Lesley born in 1899, Carol born in 1902, Irma born in 1903, and Marjorie born in 1905.

The Frost family lived on farms their whole life. Frost was a full time teacher of English and Drama at Pinkerton Academy. Later he taught psychology at the State Normal School in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Although Frost never stayed in college long enough to get a degree, he remained a professor of English at Amherst College for several years. Amherst College gave Frost more than forty honorary degrees.

In 1911 Frost moved his wife and four children to England, where they remained for three years. While living in England, Frost published his first and second books. When Frost returned to the United States, he was a known poet. He returned to a farm in Vermont where he continued to write poetry. In his lifetime he received the Pulitzer Prize four times. Upon his death on January 29, 1963, Robert Frost had published many books, and received many medals along the way. Frost's poetry is read in numerous schools today. In this paper I will discuss three of Frost's poems. They are "Nothing Gold can Stay," "Fire and Ice," and "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening".

In the first poem "Nothing Gold can Stay," the literal meaning is that seasons change. It is about the first sign of spring. Usually the first sign of spring is that leaves turn green. During spring, the leaves turn from leaves to flowers on some trees, and when spring has ended the flowers return to leaves. In this poem spring does not stay very long and ends quickly within the hour.

The beginning of this poem gives you a mental picture by starting off in paradox: "green is gold" and "leaf's a flower." (Ferguson) Green is the first sign of spring. Gold is a precious metal but also represents a color. The line "Her early leafs a flower;" means the earliest leaf is beautiful like a flower, but it is not a flower, it is a leaf. "The leaf is

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disguised for a moment as a flower." (Ferguson) The color gold, or a flower, cannot be preserved or last very long which is proven when gold changes to green and flower changes to leaf. The word "subsides" is the process of change, the leaf changing back to leaf and "dawn" changing to "day". The last line "Nothing Gold can Stay" symbolizes all perfections that do not last. (Marcus)

The poem is eight lines and uses couplet rhyme and end-stopped lines. This poem consists of stressed syllables. Line 2 and 7 have three stressed syllables which are Hardest-Hue-Hold and Dawn-Down-Day.(Rea) Also each line has six syllables keeping the same rhythm throughout the entire poem. Line 1 and 3 contain synonyms "first" and "early". The last four lines contain three synonymous verbs-subside, sink, and go down, which link the poem together. (Rea)

The second poem "Fire and Ice" literal meaning is how the world is going to end. In this poem, the world is going to end by catching on fire or by freezing into ice. The world does not end in this poem, but it helps you to make a decision of how it may end. The last line of the poem "And would suffice", makes you think ice would be an adequate way for the world to end.

The mental picture of this poem can be interpreted as the world ending in fire or incineration, which is a biblical ending to the world. On the other hand, the world will end in ice, which is a scientific prediction of the world ending in an ice age. (Serio) This poem symbolizes something other then that. Fire symbolizes passion and ice symbolizes hatred. In this poem fire is equated with desire, or the heat of passion. Ice is equated with cold hatred. (Hansen) Both desire and hatred are emotions of the human heart. Passion being a lesser sin than hatred is therefore mentioned at the beginning of the poem.

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The use of first-person pronouns in lines 3, 4, and 6 suggest the poem is a personal opinion. This poem has an aba, abc, bcb rhyme scheme. Frost also cuts his pattern of four stresses in half. He closes the poem with two lines having only two stresses. His second line "Some say in ice" also has only two stresses. (Serio) The rest of the lines in the poem have four stresses. Although this poem has a change in stresses, it still maintains a certain rhythm.

The third poem, "Stopping