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Early Poems

Robert Frost
Chapters (113)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Introduction
  4. A BOY’S WILL
  5. INTO MY OWN
  6. GHOST HOUSE
  7. MY NOVEMBER GUEST
  8. LOVE AND A QUESTION
  9. A LATE WALK
  10. STARS
  11. STORM FEAR
  12. WIND AND WINDOW FLOWER
  13. TO THE THAWING WIND
  14. A PRAYER IN SPRING
  15. FLOWER-GATHERING
  16. ROSE POGONIAS
  17. ASKING FOR ROSES
  18. WAITING
  19. IN A VALE
  20. A DREAM PANG
  21. IN NEGLECT
  22. THE VANTAGE POINT
  23. MOWING
  24. GOING FOR WATER
  25. REVELATION
  26. THE TRIAL BY EXISTENCE
  27. IN EQUAL SACRIFICE
  28. THE TUFT OF FLOWERS
  29. SPOILS OF THE DEAD
  30. PAN WITH US
  31. THE DEMIURGE’S LAUGH
  32. Now CLOSE THE WINDOWS
  33. A LINE—STORM SONG
  34. OCTOBER
  35. MY BUTTERFLY
  36. RELUCTANCE
  37. NORTH OF BOSTON
  38. THE PASTURE
  39. MENDING WALL
  40. THE DEATH OF THE HIRED MAN
  41. THE MOUNTAIN
  42. A HUNDRED COLLARS
  43. HOME BURIAL
  44. THE BLACK COTTAGE
  45. BLUEBERRIES
  46. A SERVANT TO SERVANTS
  47. AFTER APPLE-PICKING
  48. THE CODE
  49. THE GENERATIONS OF MEN
  50. THE HOUSEKEEPER
  51. THE FEAR
  52. THE SELF—SEEKER
  53. THE WOOD-PILE
  54. GOOD HOURS
  55. MOUNTAIN INTERVAL
  56. THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
  57. CHRISTMAS TREES
  58. AN OLD MAN’S WINTER NIGHT
  59. A PATCH OF OLD SNOW
  60. IN THE HOME STRETCH
  61. THE TELEPHONE
  62. MEETING AND PASSING
  63. HYLA BROOK
  64. THE OVEN BIRD
  65. BOND AND FREE
  66. BIRCHES
  67. PEA BRUSH
  68. PUTTING IN THE SEED
  69. A TIME TO TALK
  70. THE COW IN APPLE TIME
  71. AN ENCOUNTER
  72. RANGE-FINDING
  73. LONELINESS
  74. THE BONFIRE
  75. A GIRL’S GARDEN
  76. THE EXPOSED NEST
  77. “OUT, OUT——”
  78. BROWN’S DESCENT
  79. THE GUM-GATHERER
  80. THE LINE-GANG
  81. THE VANISHING RED
  82. SNOW
  83. THE SOUND OF THE TREES
  84. POEMS TO 1922 (LATER PUBLISHED IN NEW HAMPSHIRE)
  85. A STAR IN A STONE-BOAT
  86. THE CENSUS-TAKER
  87. MAPLE
  88. THE AX-HELVE
  89. THE GRINDSTONE
  90. PAUL’S WIFE
  91. WILD GRAPES
  92. PLACE FOR A THIRD
  93. I
  94. FIRE AND ICE
  95. DUST OF SNOW
  96. To E. T.
  97. THE AIM WAS SONG
  98. FOR ONCE, THEN, SOMETHING
  99. BLUE-BUTTERFLY DAY
  100. THE ONSET
  101. GOOD-BY AND KEEP COLD
  102. NOT TO KEEP
  103. A BROOK IN THE CITY
  104. EVENING IN A SUGAR ORCHARD
  105. THE VALLEY’S SINGING DAY
  106. MISGIVING
  107. A HILLSIDE THAW
  108. PLOWMEN
  109. ON A TREE FALLEN ACROSS THE ROAD
  110. THE LOCKLESS DOOR
  111. THE NEED OF BEING VERSED IN COUNTRY THINGS
  112. EXPLANATORY NOTES
  113. INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES
001

EARLY POEMS

A BOY’S WILL, NORTH OF BOSTON, MOUNTAIN INTERVAL, AND OTHER POEMS

ROBERT LEE FROST was born in San Francisco, California, on March 26, 1874, and moved with his mother and sister to Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1885. He attended Dartmouth College for less than a semester and Harvard College as a special student for two years. Working as a chicken farmer and as a teacher in Derry, New Hampshire, he wrote poetry at night. He and his wife, Elinor, moved their family to England in 1912, where his first two books, A Boy’s Will and North of Boston, were published in 1913 and 1914. When Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had become an important American poet. Over the next five decades, he published nine more volumes of poetry, and his reputation as one of the century’s most powerful poets grew. In addition to teaching at Amherst, the University of Michigan, and Harvard, Frost received over forty honorary degrees and four Pulitzer Prizes. Frost read at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961, the same year the U.S. State Department sent him on a “good-will mission” to Russia. Frost died in Boston, Massachusetts, January 29, 1963.

ROBERT FAGGEN is the Barton Evans and H.Andrea Neves Professor of Literature at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin and editor of the Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost, the Selectee Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Milosz.

Title Page

001

Copyright Page

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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This volume first published in Penguin Books 1998

9 10

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Frost, Robert, 1874-1963.
[Poems. Selections]
Early poems / Robert Frost; edited and with an introduction and
notes by Robert Faggen.
p. cm.—(Penguin twentieth-century classics)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

eISBN : 978-1-101-52278-3

I. Faggen, Robert. II. Title. III. Series.
PS3511.R94A6 1998
811’.52—dc21 98—4324

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Introduction

INTRODUCTION