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Morton Marcus: He wrote, "I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat, and

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dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I've stood still and stopped the sound of feet when faraway an interrupted cry came over houses from another street, but not to call me back or say goodbye; and further still at on earthly hight, one luminary

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clock against the sky proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. His name was Robert Frost and he was born on March 26th, 1874. We are approaching the hundred and thirty-fourth anniversary of his

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birth. And this program is going to go into this great American poet and for the first half hour, I'm going to read poems that hardly anyone ever reads by him. And we're going to see a different Robert Frost than people know. Let me tell you a

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little bit about Frost, for the young people out there who may not know him and of course the many middle-aged and elderly people who are well-aware that Robert Frost is one of the great American poets of all time.

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Robert Frost was, and this is a surprise to many, born in San Francisco, California. His father, who was a journalist in New England, came out to San Francisco in 1870 because he felt a strong kinship with the South during the Civil War and

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he left New England in disgust and became a journalist in rough, raw San Francisco in 1870. For ten years then, from 1874 till 1884, Frost as a child up to 10 years old lived in San Francisco; one of his early poems is about the sea outside

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of San Francisco. But then his father died when he was 10 years old. His mother took him back to New England where he grew up and was educated. He did many, many odd jobs but the one steady job for him was poetry which of course, as we all know, makes no

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money. And he took himself shortly before 1910 over to England, where he got to know what were then called the Georgian poets, the English poets, many of whom would be killed in World War One, people like Edward Thomas and Siegfried

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Sassoon, and really established his reputation with them. Two books came out over in England, and he was recognized in England. And those books were: "A Boy's Will," which came out in 1913, the year before World War One began, and, "North of

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Boston," 1914 which again came out just before the world war, and both these books established him but, "North of Boston," when both books were published later in the United States, "North of Boston" is considered to be one of the great moments in American

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letters, certainly akin to Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." What I propose to do tonight is to read for the first half of the show several of the poems from "North of Boston," some of which are very, very famous, but many of which even the one

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famous one, people do not read. You read the short lyrics of Robert Frost, but you don't read his other poems, so I want to read them to you here. The very, very first poem is, "Mending Wall," and we all know, "Mending Wall," and it seems amazingly

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apropos because out of the natural world, Frost finds a metaphor about what divides people and how people choose to be divided. And with that in mind, thinking about what's going on in Iraq, thinking about the divisions all over this

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world, especially in the Middle East, just listen to this poem, which seems to address the problem. Again, what has happened when he went home to Massachusetts, and when he began to develop poetry, which was very, very conservative, insofar

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as its technique was concerned, he was always using iambic pentameter, he wrote sonnets, he rhymed a lot. He managed to get the voice of a thoughtful farmer from New Hampshire. And that is the sound that he can put into this verse and it is amazing.

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So, the first poem of this great book, "North of Boston" is MENDING WALL. That would be considered one of his great poems. And here it is: There's something there is that doesn't love a wall, that sends

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the frozen ground swell under it and spills the upper boulders in the sun and makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing, I have come after them and made repair where they have left not one stone on a stone but they would

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have the rabbit out of hiding to please the yelping dogs, they would. Anyway the gaps, I mean, no one has seen them made or heard them made but at spring-mending time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill and on a day we

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meet to walk the line and set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go, to each the boulders that have fallen to each and some are lows and some are nearly balls we have to use a spell to make them balance. 'Stay where you

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you are until our backs are turned.' We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, one on a side, it comes to little more. There where it is, we do not need the wall. He is all pine and I am all apple

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orchard. Why apple trees will never get across that wall and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' Spring is the mischief in me and I wonder if I could put a notion in his head. 'Why do you make,

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why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd asked to know what I was walling in or walling out and to whom I was like to give a fence. Something there is doesn't love a wall

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that wants it down.' I could say, I could say 'Elves' to him, but it's not elves exactly and I'd rather he said it for himself. I see him there bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top in each hand, like an old stone savage armed, he moves

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in darkness as it seems to me, not of woods only in the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, and he likes having thought of it so well. He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

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What distinguishes, "North of Boston," is a series of very long poems, some of them rhymed, but all of them in iambic pentameter, and they are long poems that are really plays. They have a dramatic situation and a dialogue. And one of them,

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the first one I'll read is- read is very, very famous. And then I will read a couple more to give you a sense of Frost as psychologist, Frost speaking about the tensions between people, especially husbands and wives. So here we go with, "The

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Death of the Hired Man," and very simply, a wife comes out to meet her husband to tell him that the hired man whom the husband who is a former called Warren let go has come back and he looks very old and very tired. And they talk about him

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and the wife wants her husband not to be hard on the man but to be gentle with him, and he knows they've had problems and as they discuss this man called Silas, you get to know Silas, you get to know his pride. You get to know his narrow-mindedness, but

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the thing the poem takes on a tremendous emotional power, as you hear these two going back and forth about the third unseen man. Robert Frost, THE DEATH OF THE HIRED MAN. And notice the

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simplicity with which he speaks and the simplicity of what is here iambic pentameter blank verse. Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table waiting for Warren. When she heard his step, she ran on tip-toe down

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the darkened passage to meet him in the doorway with the news and put him on his guard. "Silas is back." She pushed him outward with her through the door and shut it after her. "Be kind," she said. She took the market things from Warren's arms and

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set them on the porch, then drew him down to sit beside her on the wooden steps. "When was I ever anything but kind to him? But I'll not have the fellow back," Warren said. "I told him so last haying,

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didn't I? If he left then, I said, that ended it. What good is he? Who else will harbor him at his age for the little he can do? What help is he is there's no depending on. Off he goes always when I need him most. He thinks he ought to earn a little

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pay, enough at least to buy tobacco with, so he won't have to beg and be beholden. 'All right,' I say, 'I can't afford to pay any fixed wages, though I wish I could.' 'Someone else can.' 'Then someone else will have to.' I shouldn't mind his

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bettering himself if that was what it was. You can be certain when he begins like that, there's someone at him trying to coax him off with pocket-money, in haying time, when any help is scarce. In winter, he comes back to us. Oh, I'm done."

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"Sh, not so loud, he'll hear you," Mary said. "I want him to. He'll have to sooner or late." "Oh, he's worn out. He's asleep beside the stove. When I came up from Rowe's I found him here, huddled against the barn-door

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fast asleep. A miserable sight, and frightening too, you needn't smile. I didn't recognize him. I wasn't looking for him and he's changed. Wait till you see." "Where did you say he'd been?" "He didn't say. I dragged him to

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the house and gave him tea and tried to make him smoke. I tried to make him talk about his travels. Nothing would do, he just kept nodding off." "What did he say? Did he say anything?" But little." "Anything? Mary confess. He said

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he'd come to ditch the meadow for me." "Warren!" "But did he? I just want to know." "Oh, of course he did. What would you have him say? Surely you wouldn't grudge the poor old man some humble way to save his

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self-respect. He added, if you really care to know, he meant to clear the upper pasture too. That sounds like something you have heard before? Warren, oh, I wish you could have heard the way he jumbled everything. I stopped to look two or three

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times. He made me feel so queer, to see if he was talking in his sleep. He ran on Harold Wilson, you remember, the boy you had in haying four years since. Harold's finished school and teaching in his college. Silas declares you'll have to get him

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back. He says they too will make a team for work: between the they will lay this farm as smoo h as can be. The way he mixed t at in with other things. He thi ks young Wilson a likely lad, t ough daft on education, you kn w how they fought all throug

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July under the blazing sun, S las up on the cart to build he load, Harold along beside to pitch it in." "Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot." "Well, those days troubled Silas like a dream. You wouldn't think they

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would, how some things linger. Harold's young college boy's assurance piqued him. After so many years, he still keeps finding good arguments he sees he might have used. I sympathize. I know just how it feels to think of the right

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thing to say too late. Harold's associated in his mind with Latin. He asked me what I thought of Harold's saying he studied Latin like the violin because he liked it. That an argument! He said he couldn't make the boy believe he could

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find water with a hazel prong, which showed how much good school had ever done him. He wanted to go over that, but most of all, he thinks if he could have another chance to teach him how to build a load of hay."

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"Now, I know, that's Silas' one accomplishment. He bundles every forkful in its place, and tags and numbers it for future reference so he can find and easily dislodge it in the unloading. Silas does that well. He takes it out in bunches like

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big birds' nests. You never see him standing on the hay he's trying to lift, no never, straining to lift himself. He thinks if he could teach him that, he'd be some good perhaps to someone in the world. He hates to see a boy the fool of

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books. Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk and nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope. So now, and never any different." Part of the moon was fallen down the west, dragging the whole sky with it to the

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hills. It's light poured softly in her lap. She saw it and spread her apron to it. She put out our hand among the harp-like morning-glory strings, taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves, as if she played unheard some tenderness that wrought on

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him beside her in the night. "Warren," she said, "he has come home to die. You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time." "Home," he mocked gently. "Yes, what else but home? It all

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depends on what you mean by home. Of course he's nothing to us, any more than was the hound that came a stranger to us out of the woods, worn out upon the trail." "Home is a place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." "I should

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have called it something you somehow haven't to deserve." Warren leaned out and took a step or two, picked up a little stick and brought it back and broke it in his hand and tossed it by. "Silas has better claim on us you think than on his brot

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er? Thirteen little miles as the road winds would bring hi to his door. Silas has walked t at far no doubt today. Why does 't he go there? His brother' rich, a somebody, director in the bank." "He never told us hat." "We know it though."

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"I think his brother ought to help, of course. I'll see to t at if there is need. He thought f right to take him in and migh be willing to. He may be bette than appearances. But have som pity on Silas. Do you think if he had any pride in claiming

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kin or anything he looked f r from his brother, he'd kee so still about him all this tim ?" "Hmm, I wonder what's b tween them?" "I can tell you Silas is what he is, we would 't mind him, but just the kind hat kinfolk can't abide. He

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never did a thing so very bad. He don't know why he isn't qui e as good as anybody. Worthless though he is, he won't be made a hamed to please his brother." "I can't think Si ever heard any ody."

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"No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay and rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back. He wouldn't let me put him on the lounge. You must go in and see what you can do. I made the bed up for him there tonight. You'll be surprised at

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him, how much he's broken. His worth days are done, I'm sure of it." "I'd not be in a hurry to say that." "I haven't been. Go, look, see for yourself. But Warren, please remember how it is. He's come to help you ditch the meadow. He has a plan. You

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mustn't laugh at him. He may not speak of it and then he may. I'll sit and see if that small sailing cloud will hit or miss the moon." "It hit the moon. Then there were three there, making a dim

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row, the moon, the little silver cloud, and she." Warren returned to soon, it seemed to her, slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited. "Warren," she questioned. "Dead," was all he answered.

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So, those are the long poems that I'm going to read from and that one most people know. Let me give you some other things. Frost is really a very, very complex poet. His work reads so simply and sometimes very cleverly, but really what his

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themes are, is isolation, our isolation from each other, our isolation from nature, even in nature, his sense of extinction and man's limitations. To him, the universe is out there and doesn't answer us or our questions, or our wonderings or

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answers them in some way, ironically, ambiguously, and there are no real answers at all. So, let me read you now, a poem before I go on that really illustrates that and I think it's one of the great Robert Frost poems. And it is called,

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"The Most of It." And very, very simply, it is exactly what I have just heard. And if I don't find it where I thought I'd put it, we will- well have this thing totally arranged. And then when I look for things I find I haven't arranged it. So, let me,

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yes, I remember how this is done. The situation here is one that I almost talked about verbatim and that is, the speaker, maybe Frost, maybe a character like the one who walked out in the first poem in the city streets late at night

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looking for some meaning, and the clock almost seems like the stars themself. In this case, like so much of many of us, we just asked the question, why am I alone? Where is the meaning? Why don't I have love? Why haven't I found another human

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being? Why doesn't the universe or God answer my questions? And this is one of those ironic moments when it seems as though nature, God, the universe does answer the question. In this case, why don't I find another person, counter love? And the

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poem is called: THE MOST OF IT He thought he kept the universe alone, for all the voice and answer he could wake was but the mocking echo of his own from

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some tree-hidden cliff across the lake. Some morning from the boulder-broken beach, he would cry out on life, that what it wants is not its own love back in copy speech but counter love, original response. And nothing ever came of what he cried

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unless it was the embodiment that crashed in the cliff's talus on the other side, and then in the far distant water splashed, but after a time allowed for it to swim, instead of proving human when it neared and someone else additional to

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him, as a great buck it powerfully appeared, pushing the crumpled water up ahead, and landed pouring like a waterfall and stumbled through the rocks with horny tread and forced the underbrush, and that was all.

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So here, if there is an answer, that nature or God gives to, why don't I find another person? Who am I? It's just a deer coming from the other side of the lake that pushes right by him and doesn't notice him. Is it an answer? It's the irony of Robert

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Frost. Here is a very interesting poem going back to, "North of Boston." And it is called, "Home Burial." And it's one of these long dramatic poems that people usually don't hear. And it really shows the tension and interrelationships between

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people, which we usually do not associate with Robert Frost because we always read his shorter lyrics. But here's the great insight in this dramatic scene that identifies itself and the tension between this married couple.

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HOME BURIAL He saw her from the bottom of the stairs before she saw him. She was starting down, looking back over her shoulder at some fear. She took a doubtful step and then undid it to raise

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herself and look again. He spoke advancing toward her, "What is it you see from up there always, for I want to know." She turned and sank upon her skirts at that, and her face changed from terrified to dull. He said the gain time, "What is it you see,"

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mounting until she cowered under him. "I will find out now, you must tell me, dear." She in her place, refused him any help with the least stiffening of her neck and silence. She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see. She let him look, sure that he

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wouldn't see. Blind creature and awhile he didn't see. But at last he murmured, "Oh," and again, "Oh." "What is it? What do you see?" She said. "Just that. I see." "You don't," sh challenged, "Tell me what i is." "The wonder is I didn't se

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at once. I never noticed it fro here before. It must be wante to it, that's the reason. I se the little graveyard where m people are. So small the windo frames the whole of it. Not s much larger than a bedroom, i it? There are three stones o

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slate and one of marble broad-shouldered little slab there in the sunlight on th sidehill. We haven't to min those, but I understand, it i not the stones, but the child' mound.

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"Don't, don't, don't, don't," she cried. She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm that rested on the banister, and slid downstairs and turned on him with such a daunting look. He said twice over before he knew himself, "Can't a man speak

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of his own child he's lost? Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost? "Not you," she said, "Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it. I must get out of here. I must get air. I don't know rightly whether any man can." "Amy! Don't go to someone

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else this time. Listen to me. I won't come down the stairs." He sat and fixed his chin between his fists. "There's something I should like to ask you, dear." "You don't know how to ask it." "Help me, then." Her fingers move the latch for all reply.

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"My words are nearly always an offense. I don't know how to speak of anything so as to please you. But I might be taught, I should suppose. I can't say I see how a man must partly give up being a man with a women-folk. We could have some

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arrangement by which I'd bind myself to keep hands off. Anything special you're a-mind to name. Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love. Two that don't love can't live together with them. But two that do love can't live together

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with them." She moved the latch a little. "Don't, don't go. Don't carry it to someone else this time. Tell me about it if it's something human. Let me into your grief. I'm not so much unlike other folks as your standing there apart would make

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me out. Give me my chance, Amy. I do think, though, you overdo it a little. What was it brought you up to think it the thing to take your mother-loss of a first child so inconsolably, in the face of love, you think his memory might be satisfied? There

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you go, sneering now." "I'm not sneering, Amy, I'm not. You make me angry. I'll come down to you, God, what a woman. And it's come to this, a man can't speak of his own child that's dead." "You can't because

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you don't know how to speak. If you had any feelings, you that dug with your own hand, how could you? His little grave. I saw you from that very window there, making the gravel leap and leap in air, leap up, like that, like that, and land so

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lightly and roll back down the mound beside the hole. I thought, who is that man? I didn't know you. And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs to look again and still your spade kept lifting. Then you came in. I heard your

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rumbling voice out in the kitchen, and I don't know why, but I went near to see with my own eyes. You could sit there with the stains on your shoes of the fresh earth from your own baby's grave and talk about your everyday concerns. You had stood

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the spade up against the wall outside there in the entry, for I saw it." "I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed. I'm cursed. God, if I don't believe I'm cursed." "I can repeat the very words you

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were saying. Three foggy mornings, and one rainy day will rot the best birch fence a man can build." That's what you there said. Think of it, talk like that at such a time! What had how long it takes a birch to rot to do with what was in the

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darkening parlor? You couldn't care! The nearest friends can go with anyone to death, come so far short they might as well not try to go at all. No, from the time when one is sick to death, one is alone, and he dies more alone. Friends make pretense of

00:32:52.500 - 00:33:09.480

following to the grave, but before one is in it, their minds are turned and making the best of their way back to life and living people and things the understand. But the world' evil. I won't have grief so if can change it. Oh, I won't,

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won't! There you said it all and you feel better. You won't go now, right Amy? You're crying. Close the door. The heart's gone out of it. Why keep it up, Amy? There's someone coming down the

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road, look!" "You, oh, you think the talk is all. I must go somewhere out of this house. How can I make you-" "If you do!" She was opening the door wider. "Where do you mean to go? First tell me that. I'll

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follow and bring you back by force. I will!" A kind of poem not associated with Robert Frost, the subject of tonight's Poetry Show. The Board of Directors of KUSP and the Pataphysical

00:34:43.800 - 00:35:02.670

broadcasting foundation meets monthly and the public is invited to attend. This month, the board meets tomorrow evening beginning at 6pm at the KUSP Studios, 203 8th Avenue in Santa Cruz. Call the station during business hours tomorrow for more

00:35:02.670 - 00:35:23.460

information, our numbers are 476-2800 or 800-655-5877. And let me repeat that. This is for the meeting to take place tomorrow night at the studios here at KUSP at 203 8th Avenue in Santa Cruz, you're all invited to come. And for more

00:35:23.460 - 00:35:47.760

information, call the station at 476-2800 or 800-655-5877. And remember at nine tonight, we present 'From the Bookshelf' hosted by Gary Shapiro. Each week Gary presents a spoken word program with stories, authors, and special guests. Join us this

00:35:47.760 - 00:36:07.420

evening at 9pm following the Poetry Show on Central Coast Public Radio, KUSP. Well, tonight we are doing a birthday show of Robert Frost. And I'm reading poems that are not usually read by Frost, and

00:36:07.420 - 00:36:34.900

they are long narrative sort of plays, or scenes from plays and I want to read one more. And again, it is from the second book of his called, "North of Boston." And this one is very strange indeed and it almost sounds like something out of a

00:36:34.900 - 00:36:54.730

Bergman movie. But here it is written before World War I and you put together what the scene is, and I will talk to you afterwards. Obviously, in, "Home Burial," the scene is this woman whose detachment from her husband, to put it mildly,

00:36:54.730 - 00:37:09.580

occurred when they buried their first child, and she thought that he really did not show the proper amount of feeling and solemnity, and she has never forgiven him, and she is obviously going off with other men, that is the hint that's in

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here. And then he goes and gets her or she comes back, but it seems all to shame him. These are very psychological pictures and the next one I have to read you is no different. It's shorter than the others, and it is called:

00:37:26.470 - 00:37:44.370

THE FEAR A lantern light from deeper in the barn shone on a man and woman in the door, and threw their lurching shadows on a house nearby, all dark in every glassy window. A horse's hoof

00:37:44.370 - 00:38:04.560

pawed once the hollow floor, and the back of the gig they stood beside moved in a little. The man grasped the wheel, the woman spoke out sharply, "Whoa, stand still." "I saw it just as plain as a white plate," she said, "as the light on the dashboard ran

00:38:04.560 - 00:38:23.020

along the bushes at the roadside, a man's face. You must have seen it too." "I didn't see it. Are you sure?" "Yes, I'm sure! It was a face." "Joel, I'll have to look. I can't go in. I can't and have a

00:38:23.020 - 00:38:39.850

thing like that unsettled. Doors locked and curtains drawn will make no difference. I always have felt strange when we came home to the dark house after so long an absence, and the key rattled loudly into place seemed to warn someone to be getting

00:38:39.850 - 00:39:00.850

out at one door as we entered in another." "What if I'm right and someone all the time- Don't hold my arm." "I say it's someone passing." "You speak as if this were a traveled road. You forget where we are. What is beyond that he'd be going to or coming

00:39:00.850 - 00:39:17.950

from at such an hour of night, and on foot too. What was he standing still for in the bushes?" "It's not so very late, it's only dark. There's more in it than you're inclined to say. Did he look like-?" "He looked lik

00:39:17.950 - 00:39:33.700

anyone. I'll never rest tonigh unless I know. Give me th lantern." "You don't want th lantern." She pushed past hi and got it for herself. "You'r not to come," she said, "This i my business. If it's the time come to face it, I'm the one t

00:39:33.700 - 00:39:54.220

put it the right way. He'd neve dare. Listen! He kicked th stone. Hear that, hear that He's coming towards us. Joel, g in, please. Hark! I don't hea him now. But please go in." "I the first place you can't mak me believe it's-" "It is o

00:39:54.220 - 00:40:11.320

someone else he's sent to watch And now's the time to have i out with him while we kno definitely where he is. Let hi get off, and he'll be everywher around us, looking out of tree and bushes, till I shan't dar to set a foot outdoors. And

00:40:11.320 - 00:40:30.910

can't stand it, Joel. Let m go." "But it's nonsense to thin he'd care enough." "You mean yo couldn't understand his caring Oh, but you see he hadn't ha enough, Joel. I won't, I won't I promise you. We mustn't sa hard things. You mustn'

00:40:30.910 - 00:40:47.740

either." "Well, I'll be the one if anyone goes. But you give hi the advantage with this light What couldn't he do to u standing here. With this light and if to see was what h wanted, why he has seen al there was to see and gone.

00:40:49.220 - 00:41:08.780

He appeared to forget to keep his hold, but advanced with her as she crossed the grass. "What do you want?" she cried to all the dark. She stretched up tall to overlook the light that hung in both hands hot against her skirt. "There's no one, so

00:41:08.780 - 00:41:24.380

you're wrong," he said. "There is. What do you want?" she cried, and then herself was startled when an answer really came. "Nothing." It came from well along the road. She reached the

00:41:24.380 - 00:41:43.520

hand to Joel for support. The smell of scorching woolen made her faint. "What are you doing around this house at night?" "Nothing." A pause. There seemed no more to say. And then the voice again, "You seem afraid. I saw by the way you whipped up

00:41:43.520 - 00:41:58.620

the horse. I'll just come forward in the lamplight and let you see." "Yes, do. Joel, go back." She stood her ground against the noisy steps that came on, but her body rocked a little. "You

00:41:58.620 - 00:42:19.830

see," the voice said. "Oh," she looked and looked. "You don't see. I've got a child here by the hand." A robber wouldn't have his family with him. "What's a child doing at this time of night out walking?" "Every child should have the

00:42:19.830 - 00:42:35.680

memory of at least one long-after-bedtime walk. What son?" "Then I should think you try to find somewhere to walk." "Well, the highway is it happens. We're stopping for the fortnight down

00:42:35.680 - 00:42:51.760

at Dean's place." "But if that's all, Joel, you realize, you won't think anything. You understand? You understand that we have to be careful. This is a very, very lonely place, Joel." She spoke

00:42:51.790 - 00:43:07.240

as if she couldn't turn. The swinging lantern lengthened to the ground, it touched, it struck it, clattered and went out. Well, if that isn't Alfred Hitchcock, if that isn't an

00:43:07.240 - 00:43:31.210

Alfred Hitchcock study in terror, I don't know what is. And if I put the scenario together, obviously this is a former boyfriend, or former husband, who she thinks has been stalking them, a very modern idea. And obviously she is a

00:43:31.210 - 00:43:49.480

strong woman who is going to have it out and settle it once and for all with the person and doesn't want Joel, her new partner, to come to any grief or any trouble. Very, very interesting poem. Let me now go and read for you for the rest of

00:43:49.810 - 00:44:18.040

the evening. Some of those really famous poems of Robert Frost as we are celebrating his 134th birthday. He was born in March 26th, 1874, as I said, and we are celebrating him in a new way, but now we're going to go back to those most famous poems

00:44:18.040 - 00:44:43.480

of his. And we'll start off by, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." And the idea is here is a speaker, out in the middle of a snowy night, who is starting to get drowsy, and who almost wishes to just end his life out in the woods. And it

00:44:43.480 - 00:44:56.110

has been looked at as a possible suicide poem but the sound of it, the evocation of the scene is what is so remarkable. One of the great American poems: STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING

00:44:58.550 - 00:45:18.080

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though. He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer to stop without a farmhouse near between the woods and frozen

00:45:18.080 - 00:45:46.430

lake this darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake to ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep and miles to go

00:45:47.030 - 00:46:21.620

before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. Here is one of those poems of isolation I talked about, so was that one by the way. It was- well, that's interesting. It was the isolation of being alone in this case riding in a buggy and

00:46:21.620 - 00:46:37.800

here's another one, it's: AN OLD MAN'S WINTER NIGHT All out of doors looked darkly in at him through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, that gathers on a pane in empty

00:46:37.800 - 00:46:55.530

rooms. What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. What kept him from remembering what it was that brought him to that creaking room was age. He stood with barrels around him– at a loss

00:46:56.130 - 00:47:17.910

and having scared the cellar under him in clomping there, he scared it once again in clomping off;– and scared the outer night, which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar of trees and crack of branches, common things, but nothing so like

00:47:17.940 - 00:47:45.780

beating on a box. A light, he was to no one but himself where now he sat, concerned with he knew what, a quiet light and then not even that. He consigned to the moon, such as she was, so late a-rising, to the broken moon as better than the sun in

00:47:45.780 - 00:48:08.130

any case, for such a charge, his snow upon the roof, his icicles along the wall to keep; and slept. The log that shifted with a jolt once in the stove disturbed him when he shifted and eased this heavy breathing, but still slept. One aged man–

00:48:08.640 - 00:48:37.780

one man– can't keep a house, a farm, a countryside, or if he can, it's us he does it of a winter night. And Frost was also very, very funny, very satirical, very tongue in cheek and he had a whole other tone and one of his

00:48:38.560 - 00:49:07.990

funniest then, also one in which he really was able to vent it(?) and show how he just observed things, just the common everyday things around him, and here's, a very simple thing, he finds ants and a moth. And the whole irony and sense of life and existence

00:49:07.990 - 00:49:15.430

is in this poem and it's called: DEPARTMENTAL And again, it is a very ironic, twinkle-eyed Frost who's writing this.

00:49:18.840 - 00:49:38.760

An ant on the table cloth ran into a dormant moth of many times his size. He showed not the least surprise. His business wasn't with such. He gave it scarcely a touch and was off on his duty run. Yet if he encountered one of the hive's

00:49:38.760 - 00:49:59.070

enquiry squad whose work is to find out God and the nature of time and space, he would put them onto the case. Ants are a curious race. One crossing with hurry tread, the body of one of their dead isn't given a moment's arrest, seems not even

00:49:59.070 - 00:50:18.090

impressed. But he no doubt reports to any with whom he crosses antennae, and they no doubt report to the higher up at court. Then word goes forth and Formic, "Deaths come to Jerry McCormic, our selfless forager Jerry. Will the special Janizary

00:50:18.150 - 00:50:39.270

whose office it is to bury the dead of the commissary go bring him home to his people. Lay him in state on a sepal. Wrap him for shroud in a petal. Embalm him with ichor of nettle. This is the word of your Queen." And presently on the scene appears a

00:50:39.270 - 00:50:58.740

solemn mortician and taking formal position, with feelers calmly atwiddle, seizes the dead by the middle and heaving him high in air, carries him out of there. No one stands round to stare. It is nobody else's affair. It couldn't be called

00:50:58.740 - 00:51:35.000

ungentle but how thoroughly departmental. Another one of those poems like that which are full of wisdom, and almost just wise sayings. We don't, we don't read or write poems like this anymore, but they really are classics. And

00:51:36.230 - 00:51:49.340

this one is called, "Fire and Ice," and I'm sure a lot of you know it. And what's so great about this is just the way it's written and how the rhyme schemes work. FIRE AND ICE

00:51:50.650 - 00:52:13.630

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.

00:52:19.750 - 00:52:37.180

And then there are just these beautiful little poems that just works so beautifully. Here is, "The Dust of Snow," and it almost has a Japanese quality of total concentration and observation. It's called

00:52:37.180 - 00:52:54.850

THE DUST OF SNOW The way a crow shook down on me the dust of snow from a hemlock tree has given my heart a change of mood and saved some part of a day I had rued.

00:52:56.260 - 00:53:13.780

It's just a beautiful piece, but again, what makes it so memorable is the complete control of language, rhythm, rhyme and meter. Let me read it again. What he's saying here is very simple, that the wonder of nature here, the beauty of a

00:53:13.780 - 00:53:29.710

black crow and white snow and just almost the playfulness of it has taken a day in which he was unhappy, probably a hard day, and just made it a little wonderful. Let me read it again: THE DUST OF SNOW

00:53:31.910 - 00:54:02.070

The way a crow shook down on me the dust of snow from a hemlock tree has given my heart a change of mood and saved some part of a day I rued. Here's another one of these questioning poems. This is a

00:54:02.070 - 00:54:33.120

sonnet and it is just an absolutely perfectly-sounded, beautifully wrought. And I will just get it here in one second. And it's called, "Design," and what it's talking about is a moth. But in this case, it's not an ant that we're looking at,

00:54:33.120 - 00:54:50.970

we're looking at a spider and looking at it on this some flower called a heal-all, a white flower called a heal-all and what it does in the end, it makes Frost question the nature of the universe and the nature of life once more. It's called:

00:54:50.970 - 00:55:11.160

DESIGN. I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, on a white heal-all, holding up a moth like a white piece of rigid satin cloth. Assorted characters of death and blight mixed ready to begin the

00:55:11.160 - 00:55:35.430

morning right, like the ingredients of a witches' broth, a snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, and dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white? The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought

00:55:35.430 - 00:55:59.820

the kindred spider to that height, then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall? If design govern in a thing so small. And what he's saying and what he is musing on is the spider, the

00:55:59.820 - 00:56:21.780

flower, and the moth coming together to create this scene. There had to be, as far as Frost says, some kind of meaning, what but design of darkness to shock us, to appall us? If there is a design in even the smallest things of the world. And again,

00:56:21.780 - 00:57:08.700

it's the beauty of the way he says it that really makes us remember his poems again and again. And I see our time is running out, my dear friends. So let me just read one more poem or two. And this is called, "Desert Places." And again, here

00:57:08.700 - 00:57:20.430

is another- it's almost a poem that can be read along with, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." It again is in nature and it's during the snowfall. And again it is called: DESERT PLACES

00:57:22.730 - 00:57:44.390

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast in a field I looked into going past, and the ground almost covered smooth in snow, but a few weeds and stubble showing last. The woods around it have it, it is theirs. All animals are smothered in

00:57:44.390 - 00:58:06.860

their lairs. I am too absent-spirited to count, the loneliness includes me unawares. And lonely as it is that loneliness will be more lonely ere it will be less, a blanker whiteness of benighted snow, with no expression, nothing to

00:58:06.860 - 00:58:32.870

express. They cannot scare me with their empty spaces between stars, on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places. And again, the poem sounds so modern as we explore more and

00:58:32.870 - 00:58:54.650

more of space, and we see how small we are, and how large space is and we learn more and more about space. Frost not even knowing most of this just says, it's not that that would scare me, there are the desert places on earth and the desert places

00:58:55.130 - 00:59:14.240

in my own self that are enough to scare me. What we have been doing for the last hour is looking at the poems of Robert Frost, the great American poet and looking at some poems, at least in the first two thirds of the show, that you don't usually

00:59:14.240 - 00:59:40.040

associate with Robert Frost, and the reason for our doing it on March 26th, just three days from now is Robert Frost's birthday. He was born in 1874 and would be 134 years old in three days. He died in 1963, one of the great poets of America.