Frost's Poetry

Mr. Frost writes as someone truly interested and enthralled by nature. His biography writes he had “little faith in religious dogma”; how sad that a man who has so much respect for nature doesn’t realize it is God who gave him his subject matter. With his love for nature; however, he seems like a person I would like to spend some time with. Sitting on my front porch and watching the trees sway in the wind or experiencing a summer thunderstorm are two of my relaxing pastimes (which are few and far between). I also love the appearance of a “winter wonderland” as the snow falls in the winter and the next day when everything sparkles in the morning light. Frost also would be a man who could teach lessons in perseverance. Most people would have given up after devoting more than sixty years to a profession that did not seem to be successful.

One of his poems that caught my attention, not so much from enjoyment but compassion, was "Home Burial". I wonder if any of this came from the experience of losing his first son. The pain and grief the mother was feeling seemed to be beyond relief. The loss a mother feels seems to be so much stronger than others when a child dies. She seems to have focused her pain on the fact that the father didn’t seem to feel the same degree of pain she did. It sounds as if he is talking at times about the relationship between a man and woman and how he can’t seem to please her. I would like to know who he thinks she is going to visit as she tries to leave. It is a sad enactment of interaction between parents who have lost a child. Divorce is currently a common result after a couple loses a child.

"The Road Not Taken" is also another poem catching my attention. I love the visual the poem allows by talking of the two roads forking and heading in different directions. I think Frost is talking about the many times in life we have to make a decision about which direction to go and the many choices life will bring. I can understand his sorrow at not being able to follow both. Sometimes it is hard to understand why we can’t pursue more than one interest. Many of us take the traveled road because it is what others expect of us. Frost seems to suggest that taking the road less traveled can make a huge difference in the end.

The poem "Birches" provides a youthful view of the boy climbing and swinging in the tree and also just of the tree itself. I think Frost might be comparing the tree to our lives; how some days we swing and sway and other days we are bent to the ground. As the boy learns to climb the tree successfully, we learn to approach life.