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    Selected Poems of Robert Frost: Illustrated Edition
    Selected Poems of Robert Frost: Illustrated Edition
    Selected Poems of Robert Frost: Illustrated Edition
    Ebook331 pages2 hours

    Selected Poems of Robert Frost: Illustrated Edition

    By Robert Frost

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    One of the most renowned American poets of all time, Robert Frost (1874-1963) made plainspoken men and women eloquent philosophers on the human condition. Selected Poems of Robert Frost collects more than 100 poems by this master. It includes the full contents of Frost's first three volumes of poetry -- A Boy's Will, North of Boston, and Mountain Interval -- and other beloved poems like "Mending Wall," "The Road Not Taken," and "The Death of the Hired Man."

    This beautifully designed volume, with illustrations by Thomas Nason (1889-1971) is a testament to the beauty of Frost's writing and will be a treasured addition to any home library.
      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.
    —“The Road Not Taken”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFall River Press
    Release dateApr 10, 2017
    ISBN9781435165236
    Selected Poems of Robert Frost: Illustrated Edition
    Author

    Robert Frost

    Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet. Born in San Francisco, Frost moved with his family to Lawrence, Massachusetts following the death of his father, a teacher and editor. There, he attended Lawrence High School and went on to study for a brief time at Dartmouth College before returning home to work as a teacher, factory worker, and newspaper delivery person. Certain of his calling as a poet, Frost sold his first poem in 1894, embarking on a career that would earn him acclaim and honor unlike any American poet before or since. Before his paternal grandfather’s death, he purchased a farm in Derry, New Hampshire for Robert and his wife Elinor. For the next decade, Frost worked on the farm while writing poetry in the mornings before returning to teaching once more. In 1912, having moved to England, Frost published A Boy’s Will, his first book of poems. Through the next several years, he wrote and published poetry while befriending such writers as Edward Thomas and Ezra Pound. In 1915, after publishing North of Boston (1914) in London, Frost returned to the United States to settle on another farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he continued writing and teaching and began lecturing. Over the next several decades, Frost published numerous collections of poems, including New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes (1924) and Collected Poems (1931), winning a total of four Pulitzer Prizes and establishing his reputation as the foremost American poet of his generation.

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    • 2/5
      The longer, story-like pieces were not to my liking.
    • 4/5
      Pastoral poems by one of the greatest American poets. This collection brings together poems from three early books, plus a collection of poems from miscellaneous sources in the last section. The poems range from short to quite long (several pages) story poems; some of his most famous, such as The Road Not Taken, Mending Walls, and Fire and Ice, are included in this collection. A good introduction to Frost's work.

    Book preview

    Selected Poems of Robert Frost - Robert Frost

    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 grapevines 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 caged 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 snowbank steam;

    Find the brown beneath the white;

    But whate’er you do tonight,

    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 today;

    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 glow,

    You walked a way beside me

    To make me sad to go.

    Do you know me in the gloaming,

    Gaunt and dusty gray with roaming?

    Are you dumb because you know me not,

    Or dumb because you know?

    All for me? And not a question

    For the faded flowers gay

    That could take me from beside you

    For the ages of a day?

    They are yours, and be the measure

    Of their worth for you to treasure,

    The measure of the little while

    That I’ve been long away.

    Rose Pogonias

    A saturated meadow,

    Sun-shaped and jewel-small,

    A circle scarcely wider

    Than the trees around were tall;

    Where winds were quite excluded,

    And the air was stifling sweet

    With the breath of many flowers,—

    A temple of the heat.

    There we bowed us in the burning,

    As the sun’s right worship is,

    To pick where none could miss them

    A thousand orchises;

    For though the grass was scattered,

    Yet every second spear

    Seemed tipped with wings of color,

    That tinged the atmosphere.

    We raised a simple prayer

    Before we left the spot,

    That in the general mowing

    That place might be forgot;

    Or if not all so favored,

    Obtain such grace of hours,

    That none should mow the grass there

    While so confused with flowers.

    Asking for Roses

    A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,

    With doors that none but the wind ever closes,

    Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;

    It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.

    I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;

    I wonder, I say, who the owner of those is.

    Oh, no one you know, she answers me airy,

    But one we must ask if we want any roses.

    So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly

    There in the hush of the wood that reposes,

    And turn and go up to the open door boldly,

    And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.

    Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?

    ’Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.

    "Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!

    ’Tis summer again; there’s two come for roses.

    "A word with you, that of the singer recalling—

    Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is

    A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,

    And nothing is gained by not gathering roses."

    We do not loosen our hands’ intertwining

    (Not caring so very much what she supposes),

    There when she comes on us mistily shining

    And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.

    Waiting

    AFIELD AT DUSK

    What things for dream there are when spectre-like,

    Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,

    I enter alone upon the stubble field,

    From which the laborers’ voices late have died,

    And in the antiphony of afterglow

    And rising full moon, sit me down

    Upon the full moon’s side of the first haycock

    And lose myself amid so many alike.

    I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,

    Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;

    I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,

    Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,

    Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;

    And on the bat’s mute antics, who would seem

    Dimly to have made out my secret place,

    Only to lose it when he pirouettes,

    And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;

    On the last swallow’s sweep; and on the rasp

    In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,

    That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,

    After an interval, his instrument,

    And tries once—twice—and thrice if I be there;

    And on the worn book of old-golden song

    I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold

    And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;

    But on the memory of one absent most,

    For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.

    In a Vale

    When I was young, we dwelt in a vale

    By a misty fen that rang all night,

    And thus it was the maidens pale

    I knew so well, whose garments trail

    Across the reeds to a window light.

    The fen had every kind of bloom,

    And for every kind there was a face,

    And a voice that has sounded in my room

    Across the sill from the outer gloom.

    Each came singly unto her place,

    But all came every night with the mist;

    And often they brought so much to say

    Of things of moment to which, they wist,

    One so lonely was fain to list,

    That the stars were almost faded away

    Before the last went, heavy with dew,

    Back to the place from which she came—

    Where the bird was before it flew,

    Where the flower was before it grew,

    Where bird and flower were one and the same.

    And thus it is I know so well

    Why the flower has odor, the bird has song.

    You have only to ask me, and I can tell.

    No, not vainly there did I dwell,

    Nor vainly listen all the night long.

    A Dream Pang

    I had withdrawn in forest, and my song

    Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;

    And to the forest edge you came one day

    (This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,

    But did not enter, though the wish was strong:

    You shook your pensive head as who should say,

    "I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray—

    He must seek me would he undo the wrong."

    Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all

    Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;

    And the sweet pang it cost me not to call

    And tell you that I saw does still abide.

    But ’tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,

    For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

    In Neglect

    They leave us so to the way we took,

    As two in whom they were proved mistaken,

    That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,

    With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look,

    And try if we cannot feel forsaken.

    The Vantage Point

    If tired of trees I seek again mankind,

    Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,

    To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.

    There amid lolling juniper reclined,

    Myself unseen, I see in white defined

    Far off the homes

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