ROBERT FROST (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963)

• Robert Frost (1874-1963) was born in San Francisco, California. His father William Frost, a journalist and an ardent Democrat, died when Frost was about eleven years old. His Scottish mother, the former Isabelle Moody, resumed her career as a schoolteacher to support her family.

• The family lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts, with Frost's paternal grandfather, William Prescott Frost, who gave his grandson a good schooling. In 1892 Frost graduated from a high school and attended Darthmouth College for a few months.

• Over the next ten years he held a number of jobs. Frost worked among others in a textile mill and taught Latin at his mother's school in Methuen, Massachusetts.

• In 1894 the New York Independent published Frost's poem 'My Butterfly' and he had five poems privately printed.

• Frost worked as a teacher and continued to write and publish his poems in magazines. In 1895 he married a former schoolmate, Elinor White; they had six children.

• Till 1897, they taught together in school. Then Robert Frost moved to studying in Harvard. He stayed there for two years, but had to return due to his ill health and because his wife was having their second child.

• His grandfather gave them a farm at Derry, in New Hampshire before dying. They settled down on the farm and stayed there for 9 years. That is where he wrote most of his famous works.

• However, to support his family, Robert Frost had to take up several teaching jobs across the country.

• In 1912, Robert Frost and his family sailed to Glasgow and settled down in Beaconsfield near London. The next year, he published his first poetry book titled ‘A Boys Will’.

In 1915 he returned to America and settled down in Franconia, New Hampshire where he bought a farm. He then began teaching, lecturing and writing.

• From 1916 to 1938 he was the professor of English at the Amherst University. He also taught at the Bread Loaf School of English of the Middlebury College in Ripton, Vermont.

• Robert Frost died on the 29th of January, 1963. During his lifetime he was the recipient of 4 Pulitzer Prizes.

Principal Works*all titles are books of poetryA Boy's Will. London: Nutt, 1913.North of Boston. London: Nutt, 1914. Contains "Mending

Wall."Mountain Interval. New York: Holt, 1916. Contains "Birches,"

"'Out, Out—,'" and "The Road Not Taken."New Hampshire. New York: Holt, 1923. Contains "Nothing

Gold Can Stay," "Fire and Ice," and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

West-Running Brook. New York: Holt, 1928. Contains "Acquainted with the Night."

Collected Poems. New York: Holt, 1930.

A Further Range. New York: Holt, 1936. Contains "Desert Places" and "Design."

Collected Poems. New York: Holt, 1939.A Witness Tree. New York: Holt, 1942. Contains "Never Again Would

Birds' Song Be the Same," "The Secret Sits," and "The Silken Tent."

A Masque of Reason. New York: Holt, 1945. A verse drama.A Masque of Mercy. New York: Holt, 1947. A verse drama.Steeple Bush. New York: Holt, 1947.Complete Poems. New York: Holt, 1949.In the Clearing. New York: Holt, 1962.The Poetry of Robert Frost. Ed. Edward Connery Lathem. New York:

Holt, 1969. Extensively repunctuated by the editor and thus textually unreliable.

Collected Poems, Prose & Plays. New York: Library of America, 1995.

‘Out, Out—’‘BY ROBERT FROST

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yardAnd made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,

Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.And from there those that lifted eyes could count

Five mountain ranges one behind the otherUnder the sunset far into Vermont.

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,As it ran light, or had to bear a load.

And nothing happened: day was all but done.Call it a day, I wish they might have said

To please the boy by giving him the half hourThat a boy counts so much when saved from work.

His sister stood beside him in her apronTo tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,

As if to prove saws know what supper meant,Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—

He must have given the hand. However it was,Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!

The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,As he swung toward them holding up the hand

Half in appeal, but half as if to keepThe life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—

Since he was old enough to know, big boyDoing a man’s work, though a child at heart—

He saw all was spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’

So. But the hand was gone already.The doctor put him in the dark of ether.

He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.

No one believed. They listened to his heart.Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.

No more to build on there. And they, since theyWere not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

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• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost

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