Type Book
Date 1913
Pages 63
Tags poetry

A Boy's Will

Of course I'd read a few poems by Robert Frost at some point during my life, but I wanted to get a little more familiar with poetry in general and Frost in particular, so I decided to begin at the beginning. There are some lovely poems in here, though perhaps none are my particular favorites.

"My November Guest" is wonderfully easy to read (i.e. the rhythm is natural--the interpretation is not quite so simple!) and felt as appropriate in January as November.

"The Tuft of Flowers", too, I especially liked. I read in it the transformative power of experience, as, in the space of a few lines, the speaker goes from:

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,--alone,

'As all must be,' I said within my heart,
'Whether they work together of apart.'

to:

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

'Men work together,' I told him from the heart,
'Whether they work together or apart.'

It's a lovely poem, indeed.

Name Role
Robert Frost Author