Frost in Late March

Image borrowed from Bing


Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

He graduated from high school at the top of his class but dropped out of Dartmouth after a semester and tried to convince his high school co-valedictorian, Elinor White, to marry him immediately. She refused and insisted on finishing college first. They did marry after she graduated, and it was a union that would be filled with losses and feelings of alienation. Their first son died from cholera at age three; Frost blamed himself for not calling a doctor earlier and believed that God was punishing him for it. His health declined, and his wife became depressed. In 1907, they had a daughter who died three days after birth, and a few years later Elinor had a miscarriage. Within a couple years, his sister Jeanie died in a mental hospital, and his daughter Marjorie, of whom he was extremely fond, was hospitalized with tuberculosis. Marjorie died a slow death after getting married and giving birth, and a few years later, Frost's wife died from heart failure. His adult son, Carol, had become increasingly distraught, and Frost went to visit him and to talk him out of suicide. Thinking the crisis had passed, he returned home, and shortly afterward his son shot himself. He also had to commit his daughter Irma to a mental hospital.

His behavior became erratic at times and worried people. He asked the wife of a colleague to marry him and she refused, though did agree to work for him as a secretary and tour manager. President John F. Kennedy would later say of Frost that his "sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation" and that his poetry had a "tide that lifts all spirits." Even during periods of deep depression, he drew large crowds to his immensely popular poetry readings, which he preferred to call poetry "sayings."

Frost was 86 when he spoke and performed a reading of his poetry at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy on January 20, 1961. He died in Boston two years later, on January 29, 1963, of complications from prostate surgery. He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph quotes a line from one of his poems: "I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

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

A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.
Robert Frost

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

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

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

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

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone.
Robert Frost

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
Robert Frost

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Robert Frost

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.
Robert Frost

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.
Robert Frost

Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.
Robert Frost

And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
Robert Frost

Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.
Robert Frost

But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost

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

College is a refuge from hasty judgment.
Robert Frost

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
Robert Frost

Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.
Robert Frost

Education is hanging around until you've caught on.
Robert Frost


Posted in part over on the Writer's Almanac