A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost

Robert Frost

• Publisher: Canterbury Classics
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781684129249
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

The early works of beloved poet Robert Frost, collected in one volume. The poetry of Robert Frost is praised for its realistic depiction of rural life in New England during the early twentieth century, as well as for its examination of social and philosophical issues. Through the use of American idiom and free verse, Frost produced many enduring poems that remain popular with modern readers. A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost contains all the poems from his first four published collections: A Boy's Will (1913), North of Boston (1914), Mountain Interval (1916), and New Hampshire (1923), including classics such as "The Road Not Taken, " "Fire and Ice, " and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

New Hampshire

New Hampshire

I met a lady from the South who said

(You won’t believe she said it, but she said it):

“None of my family ever worked, or had

A thing to sell.” I don’t suppose the work

Much matters. You may work for all of me.

I’ve seen the time I’ve had to work myself.

The having anything to sell is what

Is the disgrace in man or state or nation.

I met a traveller from Arkansas

Who boasted of his state as beautiful

For diamonds and apples. “Diamonds

And apples in commercial quantities?”

I asked him, on my guard. “Oh yes,” he answered,

Off his. The time was evening in the Pullman.

“I see the porter’s made your bed,” I told him.

I met a Californian who would

Talk California—a state so blessed,

He said, in climate none had ever died there

A natural death, and Vigilance Committees

Had had to organize to stock the graveyards

And vindicate the state’s humanity.

“Just the way Steffanson runs on,” I murmured,

“About the British Arctic. That’s what comes

Of being in the market with a climate.”

I met a poet from another state,

A zealot full of fluid inspiration,

Who in the name of fluid inspiration,

But in the best style of bad salesmanship,

Angrily tried to make me write a protest

(In verse I think) against the Volstead Act.

He didn’t even offer me a drink

Until I asked for one to steady him.

This is called having an idea to sell.

It never could have happened in New Hampshire.

The only person really soiled with trade

I ever stumbled on in old New Hampshire

Was someone who had just come back ashamed

From selling things in California.

He’d built a noble mansard roof with balls

On turrets like Constantinople, deep

In woods some ten miles from a railroad station,

As if to put forever out of mind

The hope of being, as we say, received.

I found him standing at the close of day

Inside the threshold of his open barn,

Like a lone actor on a gloomy stage—

And recognized him through the iron gray

In which his face was muffled to the eyes

As an old boyhood friend, and once indeed

A drover with me on the road to Brighton.

His farm was “grounds,” and not a farm at all;

His house among the local sheds and shanties

Rose like a factor’s at a trading station.

And he was rich, and I was still a rascal.

I couldn’t keep from asking impolitely,

Where had he been and what had he been doing?

How did he get so? (Rich was understood.)

In dealing in “old rags” in San Francisco.

Oh it was terrible as well could be.

We both of us turned over in our graves.

Just specimens is all New Hampshire has,

One each of everything as in a showcase

Which naturally she doesn’t care to sell.

She had one President (pronounce him Purse,

And make the most of it for better or worse.

He’s your one chance to score against the state).

She had one Daniel Webster. He was all

The Daniel Webster ever was or shall be.

She had the Dartmouth needed to produce him.

I call her old. She has one family

Whose claim is good to being settled here

Before the era of colonization,

And before that of exploration even.

John Smith remarked them as he coasted by

Dangling their legs and fishing off a wharf

At the Isles of Shoals, and satisfied himself

They weren’t Red Indians but veritable

Pre-primitives of the white race, dawn people,

Like those who furnished Adam’s sons with wives;

However uninnocent they may have been

In being there so early in our history.

They’d been there then a hundred years or more.

Pity he didn’t ask what they were up to

At that date with a wharf already built,

And take their name. They’ve since told me their name—

Today an honored one in Nottingham.

As for what they were up to more than fishing—

Suppose they weren’t behaving Puritanly,

The hour had not yet struck for being good,

Mankind had not yet gone on the Sabbatical.

It became an explorer of the deep

Not to explore too deep in others’ business.

Did you but know of him, New Hampshire has

One real reformer who would change the world

So it would be accepted by two classes,

Artists the minute they set up as artists,

Before, that is, they are themselves accepted,

And boys the minute they get out of college.

I can’t help thinking those are tests to go by.

And she has one I don’t know what to call him,

Who comes from Philadelphia every year

With a great flock of chickens of rare breeds

He wants to give the educational

Advantages of growing almost wild

Under the watchful eye of hawk and eagle—

Dorkings because they’re spoken of by Chaucer,

Sussex because they’re spoken of by Herrick.

She has a touch of gold. New Hampshire gold—

You may have heard of it. I had a farm

Offered me not long since up Be...