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COME INTO MY DREAM
His Brief Biographical Sketch
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Other talk about him
>>by Frost's granddaughter on the relationship
between Frost and Helen Thomas in the poet's later years.
Birches Birches
Putting inPutting
the seed
in the seed
Going for water
Going for water
ReluctanceReluctance
Mowing
Mowing
Blueberries
Blueberries
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Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. He
moved to New England at the age of eleven and
became interested in reading and writing poetry
during his high school years in Lawrence,
Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth
College in 1892, and later at Harvard, but never
earned a formal degree. Frost drifted through a
string of occupations after leaving school, working
as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence
Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly,"
was published on November 8, 1894, in the New
York newspaper The Independent.
In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a
major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The
couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire
farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was
influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward
Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in
England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet
Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work. By
the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had
published two full-length collections, A Boy's Will and North of
Boston, and his reputation was established. By the nineteentwenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and
with each new book—including New Hampshire (1923), A
Further Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing
(1962)—his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes)
increased.
Though his work is principally associated with the life
and landscape of New England, and though he was
a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who
remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic
movements and fashions of his time, Frost is
anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The
author of searching and often dark meditations on
universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern
poet in his adherence to language as it is actually
spoken, in the psychological complexity of his
portraits, and in the degree to which his work is
infused with layers of ambiguity and irony. Robert
Frost lived and taught for many years in
Massachusetts and Vermont, and died on January 29,
1963, in Boston.
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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.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
As he went out and in to fetch the cows-Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Explanatory note
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Birches was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in August 1915.
It was later included in the volume Mountain Interval.
Birches are a common sight in New England.
Of the sixty-line poem – the first forty four lines can be read
like a superb description of a boy’s play. ‘A boy too far from
town to play baseball’ has mastered the art of swinging on
the birches. The graphic description of swinging on the birches
arouses heartfelt joy in the activity and added to it is the poet’s
own nostalgia of his boyhood days.
Although twice he repeats,
‘ I like to think some boy’s been swinging them’
and ‘I should prefer to have some boy bend them’, yet,
…Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice storm.
And so he’s reminded that the trees are bent due to the ice storms
and not due to the swinging, as he would like to believe.
Two beautiful images that are often quoted occur in this poem,
one, of the birch branches,
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust-Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
And that of arching tree-trunks,
trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
A joyous boyhood activity gradually turns him to philosophical
thoughts.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
When the going gets too tough, like a swinger of birches, he
dreams of escaping from the earth to heaven. But only for a
while, he’s quick to add. A strong believer in the goodness of all
things in life, he clarifies,
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return.
For,
Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
The poem reminds me of William Wordsworth’s, To The Skylark,
Type of the wise, who sore, but never roam—
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!
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You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper's on the table, and we'll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea);
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a Springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs
Explanatory note
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A simple poem about the simple pleasures of life. A life lived close to
the land. Of practical tasks that bring one closer to life and nature.
Where reality or love does not descend on one gently but in a very
impassioned and keen manner. Where facts and imagination become
one. And practical tasks assume an unexplained fervour. Nature reveals
more of life.
The poet who has becomes a 'Slave to a Springtime passion for the
earth' is sowing 'smooth bean and wrinkled pea' but is more conscious
of 'burying the white Soft petals fallen from the apple tree' along with
these.
He's not sure he'll be able to go home easily and says
'we'll see If I can leave off'' the work (Nature) and go before his
wife who has come to fetch him for supper too forgets what she
came for and gives in to the irresistible lure of the springtime
surroundings.
The picturesque last lines, to us today, will probably and
unfortunately, only bring to mind one of those documentaries on
the Discovery Channel showing a seedling break into a plant and
flowering too - all within a few seconds.
Every farmer can be expected to experience a feeling of love while
sowing and seeing the seeds sprout and grow. But the poet's love
for Nature is so overwhelming, so intense, that nothing less that
'burning' seems to describe this love. The love that he experiences
in sowing seeds and seeing them sprout forth ('sprout forth' is an
antithesis of his graphic description of The sturdy seedling with
arched body comes/ Shouldering its way and shedding the earth
crumbs) is so intense that he exclaims, almost groans,
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs
The poet farmer needs not the returns of his produce but the
very process - of simple farming tasks that yield all the
gratification he desires, to fulfill his purpose in life.
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The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook if still it ran;
Not loth to have excuse to go,
Because the autumn eve was fair
(Though chill), because the fields were ours,
And by the brook our woods were there.
We ran as if to meet the moon
That slowly dawned behind the trees,
The barren boughs without the leaves,
Without the birds, without the breeze.
But once within the wood, we paused
Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
Ready to run to hiding new
With laughter when she found us soon.
Each laid on other a staying hand
To listen ere we dared to look,
And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook.
A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fail that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.
Explanatory note
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Another picturesque poem about a simple farm chore that springs
forth a delightful aspect of Nature. Going for Water describes a
group, perhaps a couple, one beautiful autumn evening going in
search of a brook (To seek the brook if still it ran;).
The hope and happiness in their hearts can be gauged from the line, We
ran as if to meet the moon.
Though a chore (The well was dry beside the door), the task is no
burden but an opportunity to get away from the mundane routine.
The search for the brook is the search of adventure in the ordinary
'going ons' in life.
The rest of the poem is pure joy to the ears and the mind's eye.
Though its the moon which occasionally hides behind clouds, it is
imagined that it is the people who are hiding from the moon –
behind gnomes. Once the moon spots them, laughing like children
they run to find new hiding places.
While playing thus, they have not forgotten what they have come
for. The awareness of the physical world is not lost in the imaginary
games. The practical purposes of life are never lost sight of. So
even while the imaginary games are being enjoyed, that is, the
hearts contentment is sought, the practical aspects of life are not
forgotten. A balance between the heart's desires and fulfillment of
life's purposes is maintained.
After all the fun and adventure, dreams and play, the physical task
is fulfilled leading to enhanced pleasure. I think, in sum, it will be
appropriate to say that, reality looked at with a fair measure of
dreams and imagination renders more joy. The sound of the last
lines are a picture to behold:
A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fail that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.
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THERE was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound-And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak To the earnest
love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.
Explanatory note
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Mowing is from the volume, A Boy’s Will. Here too, Frost wanders
into the realms of dreams and imagination, but soon concludes,
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
As in Birches, in Mowing too, he displays his preference for the
immediate, tangible world and things rather than dreams and
ultimate answers.
The poet farmer, one hot afternoon, while mowing, imagines his
‘scythe’ whispering to him. He anticipates fantasy, almost wishing
that it might be saying something about the heat of the day or
perhaps about the silence of the surroundings, but the scythe - like
the birch branches that carry him first towards heaven and but
soon enough bring him down to the earth, to reality - speaks out
the truth.
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
coming from the mouth of an earnest worker such as the scythe.
The scythe is a symbol of work, of practicality, of labor.
By personifying it, the poet gives its mechanical task the
impression of tireless work that springs out only from earnest
love for work. It reminds and reinforces the poet’s faith in the
practical purposes of life that only can provide the sweetest
pleasures.
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OUT through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
Explanatory note
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
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Reluctance is about a winter evening. The poet has wandered over hills
and walls and fields and woods (fields and walls suggest civilization
while hills and woods wilderness) and is on his way back - home. At
another level he's trying to say he's seen all of life and is home - that his
journey through life has come to a close.
His melancholy mood is reflected in nature too - the trees are barren, the
snow is crusted, the dead leaves lie in heaps and the last of the blossoms
are withered. His mood lightens as he talks of the Oak, pictured as
naughty, it is seen as having saved its leaves to 'ravel' (as against 'unravel')
one by one,
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
But the pensive mood prevails. The heart is restless,
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
The practical aspects of life claim predominance. Like the 'horse' in
Stopping by Woods…, his feet, that is, his mortal self questions his desires.
And the inability to provide a certain reply makes him accept the fact that
indeed his journey has ended.
All through life man experiences circumstances when good times and
relationships end, just as a beautiful season ends. He is helpless and can
do nothing to change the course of things - all he can do is accept the
circumstances and learn to go on. But this realization too is of little
comfort. Knowing he has no power to control the course of most things
in life and accepting this, is like committing treason to one's heart. There
is a conflict here between the mind and the heart. The mind 'accepts' but
the heart finds it difficult to and perhaps considers the mind a traitor (?)
for giving in to the 'end of things'.
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不是我在說…你真滴要把這首詩看完嗎??
"YOU ought to have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day:
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!"
"I don't know what part of the pasture you mean."
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"You know where they cut off the woods-let me seeIt was two years ago-or no!-can it be
No longer than that?-and the following fall
The fire ran and burned it all up but the wall."
"Why, there hasn't been time for the bushes to grow.
That's always the way with the blueberries, though:
There may not have been the ghost of a sign
Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine,
But get the pine out of the way, you may burn
The pasture all over until not a fern
Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick,
還要再繼續看下去嗎??
And presto, they're up all around you as thick
And hard to explain as a conjuror's trick."
"It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit.
I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot.
And after all really they're ebony skinned:
The blue's but a mist from the breath of the wind,
A tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand,
And less than the tan with which pickers are tanned."
"Does Mortenson know what he has, do you think?"
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"He may and not care and so leave the chewink
To gather them for him-you know what he is.
He won't make the fact that they're rightfully his
An excuse for keeping us other folk out."
"I wonder you didn't see Loren about."
"The best of it was that I did. Do you know,
I was just getting through what the field had to show
And over the wall and into the road,
When who should come by, with a democrat-load
Of all the young chattering Lorens alive,
But Loren, the fatherly, out for a drive."
の
不
要
再
看
了
啦
不
用
這
麼
用
功
啦
~
"He's a thriftier person than some I could name."
"He seems to be thrifty; and hasn't he need,
With the mouths of all those young Lorens to feed?
He has brought them all up on wild berries, they say,
Like birds. They store a great many away.
真
~
"He saw you, then? What did he do? Did he frown?"
"He just kept nodding his head up and down.
You know how politely he always goes by.
But he thought a big thought-I could tell by his eyeWhich being expressed, might be this in effect:
'I have left those there berries, I shrewdly suspect,
To ripen too long. I am greatly to blame.'"
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They eat them the year round, and those they don't eat
They sell in the store and buy shoes for their feet."
"Who cares what they say? It's a nice way to live,
Just taking what Nature is willing to give,
Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow."
"I wish you had seen his perpetual bowAnd the air of the youngsters! Not one of them turned,
And they looked so solemn-absurdly concerned."
"I wish I knew half what the flock of them know
Of where all the berries and other things grow,
什
麼
!
你
還
再
看
~~
好
吧
GOD BLESS YOU~
Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on top
Of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they will crop.
I met them one day and each had a flower
Stuck into his berries as fresh as a shower;
Some strange kind-they told me it hadn't a name."
"I've told you how once not long after we came,
I almost provoked poor Loren to mirth
By going to him of all people on earth
To ask if he knew any fruit to be had
For the picking. The rascal, he said he'd be glad
To tell if he knew. But the year had been bad.
There had been some berries-but those were all gone.
He didn't say where they had been. He went on:
'I'm sure-I'm sure'-as polite as could be. Back Poem Menu
~
甲
右
甲
右
快
看
完
了
He spoke to his wife in the door, 'Let me see,
Mame, we don't know any good berrying place?'
It was all he could do to keep a straight face.
~
….
"If he thinks all the fruit that grows wild is for him,
He'll find he's mistaken. See here, for a whim,
We'll pick in the Mortensons' pasture this year.
We'll go in the morning, that is, if it's clear,
And the sun shines out warm: the vines must be wet.
It's so long since I picked I almost forget
How we used to pick berries: we took one look round,
Then sank out of sight like trolls underground,
And saw nothing more of each other, or heard,
Unless when you said I was keeping a bird
が
ん
ば
で
～
～
衝
呀
快
結
束
ㄌ
Away from its nest, and I said it was you.
'Well, one of us is.' For complaining it flew
Around and around us. And then for a while
We picked, till I feared you had wandered a mile,
And I thought I had lost you. I lifted a shout
Too loud for the distance you were, it turned out,
For when you made answer, your voice was as low
As talking-you stood up beside me, you know."
~
"We sha'n't have the place to ourselves to enjoyNot likely, when all the young Lorens deploy.
They'll be there to-morrow, or even to-night.
They won't be too friendly-they may be politeTo people they look on as having no right
To pick where they're picking. But we won't complain.
You ought to have seen how it looked in the rain,
The fruit mixed with water in layers of leaves,
Like two kinds of jewels, a vision for thieves."
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Robert Frost and Helen Thomas
Revisited
LESLEY LEE FRANCIS
I HAVE been aware for some time of specific deficiencies
in the third volume of the Thompson/Winnick
biography of Robert Frost. As one example only, I
noted the often questionable attribution of motive in
the diary entries for the Frost visit to the British Isles, in
May and June 1957, where Lawrance Thompson had
joined the poet for the bestowal of honors. William R.
Evans, in his piece on Robert Frost and Helen Thomas,
quotes Thompson/Winnick prominently in the
conclusion of the second part. He also draws heavily
from the recollections of Helen and Edward Thomas's
youngest daughter, Myfanwy, who gave permission to
publish her mother's letters.
In researching the Frost family's stay in England from 1912
to 1915 and subsequent visits (with Elinor and Marjorie
in 1928, and alone in 1957 and 1961), and as the poet's
granddaughter, I realized how risky it is to seek
definitive psychological explanations for events or for
the dynamics of personality. The complexities and
intangibles are themselves the warp and woof of the
subject's life, as of his art. By enlarging the context in
which the interaction between Robert Frost and Helen
Thomas occurred, and by filling gaps in the sources
from which any interpretation may be drawn, we come
closer, but only closer, to an understanding of motive.
There is general agreement among Frost's biographers
with regard to the depth of RF's (as we affectionately
called him) love for the man about whom he wrote,
'The closest I ever came in friendship to anyone in
England or anywhere else in the world I think was with
Edward Thomas.' Robert helped release the pent-up
flood of poetry in his friend, and sought ways to have
his verse recognized in America. Despite obvious
differences in background, he helped Edward take a
more positive view toward life and toward his
marriage, which was experiencing serious tensions. At
the outbreak of World War I, he brought Edward's son
Merfyn back to America with him, and he sent money
to Helen after Edward's death in 1917, money sorely
needed by his own family. But it is also true, as Helen
herself concedes in her memoirs, that she 'never
became close to Robert as Edward was,' just as she
never became close to Robert's wife, Elinor. With the
publication of As it Was, the first of Helen's memoirs
(London: William Heinemann) in 1926, followed by World
Without End (London: William Heinemann) in 1931, RF
responded to the intimate autobiographical
reminiscences with dismay. When he visited England in
1928, he called upon Edward's widow and, as the
correspondence shows, was honest in conveying to her
his and his wife's distress. He thought Helen made
Edward look ridiculous, by going into such detail in their
marital affairs, and in her portrayal of Eleanor Farjeon,
whom Robert thought Helen had hoped to 'conquer . .
with magnanimity.' He wrote Jack Haines that the
meeting with Helen 'ended one passage in our lives.' And
there is where I believe Robert and Elinor would have
wanted to leave it. They had concluded that Helen's
sentimental journey in print-which, for Helen, was a
retrospective attempt to work off her grief and to give
meaning to her life-was an unseemly distortion they
considered injurious to what they loved in Edward.
They were uncomfortable with Helen's desire to carry
on a friendship that had meant so much to her husband
when alive. Yet, while Robert did indeed distance
himself from Edward's widow, it would be incorrect to
conclude that he was in some grand manner unforgiving
or deliberately hurtful. The record of the circumstances
of their final encounter, in May 1957, shows there are
no villains, and goes far to soften the impression left by
Thompson/ Winnick and Evans.
I had joined my grandfather in London on 1 June 1957,
from Madrid, where I was employed in the American
Embassy. I was privileged to accompany RF to Oxford
and Cambridge Universities when he received his honorary
degrees, and I was at the Connaught Hotel on Sunday,
2 June, when it became necessary to cancel his
scheduled trip to Lambourn with Eleanor Farjeon
and me to lunch at Bridge Cottage with the Thomas family:
Helen and her three children, Bronwen, Merfyn, and
Myfanwy. In a 3 June letter from London, I wrote my
mother, Lesley Frost, that during a drive out into Sussex
country (on 1 June, my first day in England) to visit
Frost's old and ailing friend Sir John Squire, 'RF was in a
draft and for several days it was doubtful we would get
him through the Oxford ordeal -- we did and in flying
colors. Had to cancel a trip out to see Helen Thomas.'
RF had explicitly requested and seemed to enjoy the
rapid pace of social, press, and lecturing activities, and
he pulled out of only a few of the large number of
engagements scheduled during his visit (often with as
many as three functions in one day!), but he avoided
long trips whenever possible, and the journey to
Lambourn represented at least a three-hour drive in the
Embassy car. Larry had to call a doctor, who said the
old man's heart was jumping around dangerously. He
was also suffering, he told me, from so much personal
attention:' He says they don't give him a chance to
forget about himself,' I wrote home at the time.
Apart from my own record of these events, the archival
papers on Frost's 1957 visit are revealing. Before
traveling to England and Ireland as part of the United
States Department of State's Educational Exchange:
American Specialists Program, RF was invited to submit
a list of names of persons he would like the American
Embassy in London to contact prior to his arrival on 19
May. Included on the handwritten short list of friends
were the names of Eleanor Farjeon and Helen Thomas. In
the first of three undated letters from this period
(May-June 1957), letters not mentioned by Evans in his
essay, Helen corroborates:
My dear Robert
I have just heard from the American Embassy that you
are coming to England on May 20th & that you want
to see me. I am so delighted and ecstatic, but I am
aware that you must be inundated with invitations &
all that. But somehow we must meet. But how? Of
course the best would be for you to come here & spend
at least a night with us, but I fear that is too much to
hope for. Can you suggest a time & place that would
suit you, if to come here is not possible? The children
would love to see you & it must be managed somehow
to have a family talk, not with others except dear
Eleanor whom you will especially want to see. I'd love
you to be here in our little home -- an ancient
thatchedcottage with a stream running by -- a place
among the chalk downs Edward would have loved.
Ann & I live here, but Bronwen is close by & Mervyn
would come. Robert, it will be [unclear] to see you &
talk with you
We all send our love
Your loving
Helen
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