Unit 9. Robert Lee Frost : The Road Not Taken
Introduction to the author :
Robert Frost (1874-1963 ) was born in San Grancisco, but came of New England stock, his ancestors for nine generations being New Englanders. His father left for the far West to pursue a career in journalism and Frost spent his early childhood there. When he was ten his father died, and the family moved to New England where his mother taught to earn a living. After graduating from high school, Frost studied for a few months at Dartmouth College, and then left to work as bobbin boy in a cotton mill. After his marriage he attended Harvard for two years, but left without a degree to support his growing family. In 1900 his grandfather bought him a farm in New Hampshire from which he wrested a living, supplemented by teaching, for twelve years. This was no doubt an important period in his development, for he became the poet of the New England countryside.
车臣战争 In 1912, he decided to venture on a literary career. Leaving New Hampshire, he saile
d for England. In London, he found a publisher, and his first book, A Boy’s Will (1913)brought him to the attention of influential critics, among them was the American expatriate Ezra Pound, who praid Frost as an authentic poet.
Following the publication of a cond volume of poems North of Boston(1914), Frost returned to United States. To support himlf he taught in colleges and gave poetry reading throughout much of the United States. His fame grew with the appearance of a succession of books: Mountain Interval(1916), New Hampshire (1923),West-Running Brook (1928),A Further Range(1936),A Witness Tree (1842), Steeple Bush (1947), In the Clearing(1962).By the end of his life he had become a national bard; he received honorary degrees from forty-four colleges and universities and won four Pulitzer prizes; the United States Senate pasd resolutions honoring his birthdays, and when he was 87 he read his poetry at the inauguration of president John F. Kennedy.
Introduction to the Poetry of Frost:
Robert Frost is a rious poet. Though he is generally considered a regional poet who subject matters mainly focus on the landscape and people in New England, he wrote many poems that investigate the basic themes of man’s life in his long poetic career: the individual’s relationships to himlf, to his fellow-man, to his world, and to his God.
Unlike his contemporaries in the early 20th century, he did not break up with the poetic tradition nor made any experiment on form. Instead, choosing “the old–fashioned way to be new”, he learned from the tradition, especially the familiar conventions of nature poetry and of classical pastoral poetry, and made the colloquial New England speech into a poetic expression. A poem often becomes a symbol, a careful, loving exploration of reality. Many of his poems are fragrant with natural quality. Images and metaphors in his poems are drawn from the simple country life and the pastoral landscape that can be easily understood. He saw nature as a store-hou of analogy and symbol. His concern with nature reflected deep moral uncertainties, and his poetry, for all its apparent simplicity, often probe
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s mysteries of darkness and irrationality in the bleak and chaotic landscapes of an indifferent univer where men stand alone, unaided and perplexed.
It is a mistake to imagine that Frost is easy to understand becau he is easy to read. Most of Frost’s poems are simple in the way that they are dramatic monologues or dialogues, they are short and direct on the informational level, and they have simple diction. However, profound ideas are delivered under the disgui of the plain language and the simple form, for what Frost did is to take symbols from the limited human world and the pastoral landscape to refer to the great world beyond the rustic scene. Frost combined traditional ver forms with a clear American local speech rhythm, the speech of New England farmers, achieved an effortless grace in his style.共青团组织原则
A Poem :
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,
Becau it was grassy and wanted wear (1);
Though as for that the passing there
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Had worn them really about the same,鸡素果
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
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Oh, I kept the first for another day !
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.场地租赁合同
I shall be telling this with a sigh人与电脑下象棋
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.
Note:
1. and wanted wear : and was not frequently traveled.
Comprehension and Appreciation:
In the yellow wood—it was autumn—there were two roads, a traveler stood where the tow roads diverged. He was looking at the two roads and choosing which one he should take. After looking down one road, he decided to take the other one, becau it was covered by green grass and had not been trodden by many people. He left the first road for another day, but he knew probably he could never come back, becau he had to go on on the first road which was endless.
