Frost's Poems Use Nature example essay topic

Nature is beautiful in every aspect, but as nature changes with every season, beauty and innocence in human life is much the same as the years progress. Robert Lee Frost uses nature in such a profound approach; every aspect of nature can someway correlate with any characteristic of life. Whether it is the beauty in nature signifying the joy and happiness that every person experiences, or it be the traumatic losses and disappointments that may lead to ultimate failure or destruction, Robert Frost illustrates life, love and loss in the most natural and beautiful way feasible. His style is uniquely his own, and his themes are ones that many people can relate to on countless levels, which is what made Frost so popular during his lifetime, and has continued four decades after his death. Robert Frost was born March 26 1874 in San Francisco where he spent the first eleven years of his life until his father died. It was then that he moved with his family to Lawrence, Massachusetts.

While in high school in Lawrence, Frost fell in love with Elinor White, they became engaged and married in 1896 (the same year that their son Elliott was born). After withdrawing from Harvard in 1897, the Frost's moved to a farm in Methuen, Massachusetts, and began raising poultry. Three years later Elliott died, along with Frost's mother. Frost and his family then bought a farm in Derry, where they settled down, and Frost began writing. Robert and Elinor Frost had three more children before losing another infant in 1907. In 1912, Frost became irritated with his failure at success, and moved his family to England.

This move proved to be successful when Frost's first book A Boy's Will was published in 1913, followed by North of Boston in 1914; both books appeared in the United States as well by the time that the Frost family returned in 1915. In 1938 Frost lost his wife to illness. New Hampshire garnered Frost the first of his unmatched four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, followed by Frost's Collected Poems in 1930, A Further Range in 1936, and A Witness Tree in 1942. Frost's crowning public moment was his recitation of 'The Gift Outright' at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in January of 1960. He died on January 29, 1963.

Robert Frost lived a very long and often tragic life. He suffered unreasonable guilt, and blamed himself for everything that went wrong. Robert Frost loved his family, and did everything in his power to protect them. At times, he suffered depression; he lost so many of the people he loved.

He was a man who aspired to find truth in ordinary things and tell the truth in an eloquent but reserved way. Frost wrote many of his best poems on several levels of meaning. He describes a natural setting with beautiful seasonal imagery, and he connects this to human beings. There is a literal meaning and there is a deeper more profound meaning.

Although Frost concentrates on ordinary subject matter, he evokes a wide range of emotions, and his poems often shift dramatically from humorous tones to tragic ones. Much of his poetry is concerned with how people interact with their environment, and though he saw the beauty of nature, he also saw its potential dangers. He often wrote in the standard meter of blank verse, but ran sentences over several lines so that the poetic meter plays subtly under the rhythms of natural speech. The first lines of 'Birches' illustrate this distinctive approach to rhythm: 'When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the lines of straighter darker trees, / I like to think some boy's been swinging them". In the decades when Robert Frost became popular, his poetry was considered incredibly untraditional in relation to some of his contemporaries. With his style being ordinary, it makes it easier for many people to relate to his work.

Frost's works were and still are particularly well liked by 'ordinary' readers because his works are easy to read and, on the surface, easy to understand. In the book A Boy's Will, Frost writes poems of hope and beauty. 'Love and a Question,' illustrates the optimistic view of a bridegroom trying to help a poor man. He thinks that he should help him, but not knowing if he can. His heart shows compassion but his minds shows logic. The conclusion of this poem shows not true ending, but leaves the reader in a state of imagining what was to happen to the poor man.

The Vantage Point The Poetry of Robert Frost (Page 17) 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 of men, and farther still, The graves of men on an opposing hill, Living or dead, whichever are to mind. And if by noon I have too much of these, I have but to turn on my arm, and lo, The sunburned hillside sets my face aglow, My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze, I smell the earth, I smelled the bru is " ed plant, I look into the crater of the ant. A lot of Frost can be seen in his poem, 'The Vantage Point'. In these verses, Frost reveals his basic interests: mankind and nature. What's more, he clearly exposes his strategy of immersing himself in nature until he begins to need social relations again; likewise, when he has his fill of mankind, he retreats back to the comfort and solitude of nature.

'And if by noon I have too much of these [men], / I have but to turn on my arm, / and lo, the sunburned hillside sets my face aglow. ' In this next book, North Of Boston, Frost shows evidence of his maturing by writing a short narrative essay called 'Home Burial. ' Using his own life experiences, Frost writes this story about a father and mother who have lost their child. Anger, sadness, hatred, disappointment, and shock, were just a few of the emotions that were felt in reading this poem. Frost explores not only the enormous tragedy of losing a child, but he touches on the rippling effects that such a tragedy can have on family members.

In these situations, the death of the infant indicated the onset of the deterioration of the marriage, and of the 'home' itself. Frost continues the evolution of his emotions and his examination of man in work such as 'Mending Wall' from North of Boston. Mending Wall The Poetry of Robert Frost (Pages 33-34) Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it And spills the upper boulder in the sun, And make gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs.

The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there, I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors. ' Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: 'Why do they make good neighbors?

Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down. ' I could say 'Elves' to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there, Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors. ' As they walk along mending the wall, Frost and his neighbor discuss the philosophy of walls. Frost insists upon looking more deeply into the maker of the rationale for wall building. 'Before I built a wall I'd ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out. ' Frost feels that if he and his neighbor must spend time each spring repairing the wall, there must be 'something there is that doesn't love a wall.

' In other words, if it were truly meant to be, it would stay put and not have to be reconstructed each year. In Mountain Interval, Frost's works take on a more reflective tone as he seems to be reviewing and evaluating choices he has made in his life. In 'The Road not Taken,' he regrets not having had the opportunity to go another route, but is satisfied with taking the road less traveled. 'I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference. ' He seems content with charting out in a direction all his own regardless of the difficulties he has encountered. With theses different poems into consideration; the conclusion is obvious.

Robert Frost is poet of enormous talents, and his far fetching spiracles of imaginative words, leaves the reader to his or her own imagination. The change in his writings is only in the reader's imagination, and not in the writers works; therefore, Frost's style is interpretive. Nature is all around us, and we are bound by its unpredictable transformations. Robert Frost finds the beauty of nature, yet is quite aware of its indecisiveness. In many of Frost's poems about nature, he recognizes the beauty of nature, but is also bewildered and sometimes saddened by its continuous change. Frost's poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay", portrays the idea of nature being a life force throughout all of time.

Nature is constantly showing us her beauty, but he reminds us that from each day to the next, nothing can be a permanent fixture all the time. As reflective of his personal life, he saw nature as beautiful and full of hope, yet also random and chaotic. Desert Places The Poetry of Robert Frost (Page 296) Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last. The woods around it have it -- it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs.

I am too absent-spirited to count; The loneliness includes me unawares. And lonely as it is that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less -- A blanker whiteness of benighted snow With no expression, nothing to express. They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars -- on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places. "Desert Places" shows more of Frost's emotions and deals with the natural progression of life. When the narrator realizes that the snow is covering all of the ground he becomes aware that nature is no longer alive or present in his midst.

The death of nature is examined thoroughly, and leaves little hope for regeneration. Frost is saddened with this idea of death and expresses the true loneliness of life. Nature is the process that can insight fully bring about personal reflection, and Frost uses this to reveal the splendor and wonder of nature's vivacity. Most of Frost's poems use nature imagery. However, Frost is not trying to tell us how nature works; his poems are about human psychology. His attitude is stoical, honest and accepting.

Frost uses nature as a background. Robert Frost saw nature as an alien force capable of destroying man, but he also saw man's struggle with nature as an heroic battle. As told in his poem 'Our Hold on the Planet': There is much in nature against us. But we forget: Take nature altogether since time began, Including human nature, in peace and war, And it must be a little more in favor of man, Say a fraction of one percent at the very least, Or our number living wouldn't be steadily more, Our hold on the planet wouldn't have so increased. Even though he loved natural beauty, Frost recognized the harsh facts of the natural world. He viewed these opposites as simply different aspects of reality that could be embraced in poetry.

Many of his poems are examples of the use of imagery and poetic devices of all kinds. He was a skilled versifier. Nothing Gold Can Stay The Poetry of Robert Frost (Pages 222-223) Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. 'Nothing Gold Can Stay' first appeared in Frost's 1923 volume, New Hampshire, his first book to win a Pulitzer Prize. 'Nothing Gold Can Stay' is remarkably brief. The movement of the poem is both simple and richly evocative. Viewed as a nature poem, 'Nothing Gold Can Stay' presents the moment in early spring when the vegetative world is first breaking into blossom.

It is viewed as a description of the natural world, this observation appears eminently reasonable. A branch might blossom for only a week but the resulting leaves last for months. 'Nothing Gold Can Stay' explicitly describes identical moments in three temporal cycles: the daily, the yearly, and the mythic. What lies ahead is never stated overtly, but it is in arguably present by implication. Day is inevitably followed by night. Summer is succeeded by fall and winter.

The green leaf eventually turns brown and decays. Human youth is followed by maturity, old age, and ultimately death. The golden moment, therefore, is all the more precious because it is transitory. By focusing on a single moment, Frost evokes an entire day, year, lifetime, and human history. This poem is another in which Frost expresses a fallen view, which he does not share with the speaker.

On one level, the poem has a depressing tone alluding to the idea that all that is pure will quickly fall out of grace. This loss of innocence is seen by the speaker in a sad way. This is especially clear in the line, 'So dawn goes down to day. ' The speaker, in his own fallen view, gives more weight to the disappearance of dawn, than the rising of day. This is no different than someone not wanting to get out of bed because they do not want to face the day. However, the rising of day signifies the coming of light.

So, while we may lose the blissful and peaceful ignorance / innocence of our childhood, we are lucky enough to see the light of later years, to gain wisdom. This wisdom should not be what the speaker feels in the last line, that innocence is great and loss of it is to be mourned. This wisdom is in the title of the poem 'Nothing Gold Can Stay. ' Here is Frost telling the speaker to understand that this is the natural way, and so there is no point in fighting it or being sad about it. In fact, within every leaf is just a leaf... meaning without the gold there is no green, without dawn there is no day, without death there is no birth. It is just the way it is and so we better love it.

Robert Frost's poems are beautifully written, and offer such a deep insight into life, and nature. His work connects to readers on virtually every level of consciousness, and generates readers to understand that their feelings are not rare. Everyone experiences the same emotions, and must overcome many of the same situations in life; but his poems almost bring the sense of possibility. Frost may have become popular at the dawn of the nineteenth century, his life may have ended almost half a century ago, but his poems are still as distinguished as they were before his death, and they will continue to be popular for many years to come.