Robert Frost

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Robert Lee Frost (26 March 1874 – 29 January 1963) American poet

1 Sourced
2 Attributed
3 External links

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Sourced

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
- "Reluctance"

Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, 'grace metaphors,' and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, 'Why don't you say what you mean?' We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or from some other instinct.
- "Education by Poetry"

Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.
- "The Black Cottage"

Home is the place, where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
- "The Death of a Hired Man"

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Mending Wall (1915)

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

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The Road Not Taken (1916)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

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Fire and Ice (1920)

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.

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Birches (1920)

I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake,

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep.

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Directive

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.

The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry –
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it…

As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.

Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.

The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.

And if you're lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.

First there's the children's house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.

Weep for what little things could make them glad.

This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.

(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)

I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.

(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

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Attributed

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

A definite purpose, like blinders on a horse, inevitably narrows its possessor's point of view.

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday... but never remembers her age.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words.

All poetry is a reproduction of the tones of actual speech.

An idea is a feat of association.

As it is more blessed to give than receive, so it must be more blessed to receive than to give back.

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

Do not follow where the path may lead... Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.

Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.

Half the world is composed of those who have something to say but can't; the other half is of those who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
- Variant: Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.

I'm against a homogenized society, because I want the cream to rise.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.

Isn't it funny that anything the Supreme Court says is right?

Love is an irresistable desire to be irresistably desired.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

Poetry is the first thing lost in translation.
- Variant: Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

Sometimes I have my doubts of words altogether, and I ask myself what is the place of them. They are worse than nothing unless they do something; unless they amount to deeds, as in ultimatums or battle-cries. They must be flat and final like the show-down in poker, from which there is no appeal. My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that become deeds.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.

The best way out is always through.

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.

The ear does it. The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.

The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.

The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

There are tones of voices that mean more than words.

There are two types of realists: the one who offers a good deal of dirt with his potato to show that it is a real one, and the one who is satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I'm inclined to be the second kind. To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form.