Robert Frost, Four Poems

While watching the second inauguration of President Obama on television, I was also reading from the poetry of Robert Frost. It's fifty years since he died, in January 29, 1963, a hundred years since the publication of his first volume of poetry, A Boy's Will, 1913 (David Nutt and Co., London, England). Frost lived in England from 1912 to 1915 (in Gloucestershire from 1914).

Four poems by Robert Frost that have a special significance and meaning:

1.

The Telephone


“WHEN I was just as far as I could walk
From here to-day,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don’t say I didn’t, for I heard you say—
You spoke from that flower on the window sill—
Do you remember what it was you said?”

“First tell me what it was you thought you heard.”

“Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
I leaned my head,
And holding by the stalk,
I listened and I thought I caught the word—
What was it? Did you call me by my name?
Or did you say—
Someone said ‘Come’—I heard it as I bowed.”

“I may have thought as much, but not aloud.”

“Well, so I came.”

2.

The Last Word of a Bluebird (as Told to a Child)


As I went out a Crow

In a low voice said, "Oh,

I was looking for you. 

How do you do?

I just came to tell you

To tell Lesley (will you?) 

That her little Bluebird 

Wanted me to bring word 

That the north wind last night

That made the stars bright

And made ice on the trough

Almost made him cough

His tail feathers off.

He just had to fly!

But he sent her Good-bye,

And said to be good,

And wear her red hood, 

And look for the skunk tracks 

In the snow with an axe- 

And do everything!

And perhaps in the spring 

He would come back and sing."

3.

The Road Not Taken



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.


4.

Fire and Ice


Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.