Robert Lee Frost (1874 – 1963) - American poet

Robert Frost c. 1910

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California, USA on 26th March 1874..  His parents were William Prescott Frost, Jr., a journalist and teacher, and his wife Isabelle, nee Moodie. His mother was from Scotland and his father was descended from Nicholas Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the “Wolfrana”.

Robert’s first poem was published in his high school's magazine.  He studied at Harvard University from 1897 to 1899, then became a teacher.   

On 19th December 1895 Robert married Elinor White in  Massachusetts, United States.

In 1912 Robert and his family travelled to England – living initially in Beaconsfield, a small town in Buckinghamshire. His first book of poetry, “A Boy's Will”, was published the following year. In England Robert met fellow poets, including Edward Thomas (a member of the group known as the Dymock poets and Frost's inspiration for "The Road Not Taken"), T. E. Hulme, and Ezra Pound.

Robert returned to America in 1915 and bought a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he launched a career of writing, teaching, and lecturing.

The following poem was written to tease his chronically indecisive friend and fellow poet Edward Thomas, who misinterpreted the meaning, enlisted in the British Army and was killed fighting on the Western Front in France on the First Day of the Battle of Arras – Easter Monday, 9th April 1917. Edward Thomas was buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery at Agny, France – Row 3, 43.

“The Road Not Taken” was originally published in “The Atlantic” magazine in 1915 along with two other poems from Frost.

The Road Not Taken  BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Sources:  

Find my Past, Wikipedia, 

Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978), p. 396

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