Meghan+Ables

= = =//Robert// = =//Frost// = //__poetry on __// = =

=**Leaves**  & Trees =


 * Robert Frost** was born in San Francisco, California on March 26, 1874. At the age of 11 his father died and he moved to Massachusetts to live with relatives. In high school he excelled and became interested in literature and writing, especially poetry and the natural world that surrounded him. After graduating from high school he became engaged to his high school sweat heart, Elinor White, and he enrolled at Dartmouth. Frost dropped out of school after one semester and moved back to Lawrence where Elinor was in school and worked the editor of the Lawrence Sentinel and taught school. In 1896, he and Elinor were married and their first son was born that year. The next year Frost enrolled at Harvard, but again withdrew after three semesters because of the financial pressure of supporting his family. After that, Frost rented a farm and began to raise poultry, his first son died in 1900. He settled his family into farming life when he purchased a farm for his family where he began really focus on reading and writing more often. He and his wife had three more children, with one of them dying in 1907. Frost became frustrated when his writing failed to fall into popularity and success in America, and in 1912 he moved his family to England where they stayed until 1915. Frost's work in England came to fruition when he returned to New England to find two of his books published. He quickly become popular among poetry circles in the United States and eventually everywhere. In 1938 his wife, who was so influential on his writing, died. He taught at Amherst College, Harvard and Dartmouth. His writings became increasingly popular and he won four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He died in Boston in 1963.

Bibliography information retrieved from: __ Frost's Early Poems __. 26 3 2010 .

** "In Hardwood Groves"

The same leaves over and over again! They fall from giving shade above To make one texture of faded brown And fit the earth like a leather glove.

Before the leaves can mount again To fill the trees with another shade, They must go down past things coming up, They must go down into the dark decayed.

They //must// be pierced by flowers and put Beneath the feet of dancing flowers. However it is in some other world I know that this is the way in ours. **

Upon a literal reading, it seems the narrator is describing the changing of seasons. He talks about the leaves that once provided him shade now falling down and blanketing the ground. He then explains how it is necessary for leaves to decay down into the ground underneath the flowers before they can come up and provide shade once again. In the last two lines the reader is clued in that this poem is not just about the changing of seasons when Frost writes "However it is in some other world/ I know that this is the way in ours." Readers are tipped off that he is trying to relate this is event in nature to events in our lives. Frost uses the cycle of leaves falling, decaying, and regrowing to symbolize the role and influence of past events in a person's life and future. Essentially the poem is an allegory. It explains how things in life, whether it is a circumstance or person, are present and beneficial for a certain amount of time in a person's life, but then they go away in order to allow something else to grow which will be more beneficial for that person at that time in life or in the future. The middle stanza explains that cycle and the necessity of they cycle. When I think of this poem I think of relationships, sometimes people are present in our lives for a certain time period and while it is a great relationship full of growth and happiness, it might not be what is best for us in the oncoming future. So that relationship withers and falls away, it nourished us for the time but it has to go away to make room for what is next to blossom and grow. When Frost italicizes the word "must" in the third stanza I think he is trying to emphasize the necessity of death in order for their to be new life. Death was a very present reality in Frost's life, who buried multiple sons and his wife early in his life. Frost uses this allegory of the life of leaves to humans lives explains his understanding of the necessity of death in life. media type="file" key="09 Golden Tree.m4a" width="300" height="50" I was reminded of this song that I love as I read through these poems about trees about Robert Frost.

**"A Leaf Treader"**

** I have been treading on leaves all day until I am autumn-tired. God knows all the color and form of leaves I have trodden on and mired. Perhaps I have put forth too much strength and been too fierce from fear. I have safely trodden underfoot the leaves of another year.

All summer long they were over head, more lifted up than I. ** **To come to their final place in earth they had to pass me by. All summer long I thought I heard them threatening under their breath. And when they came it seemed with a will to carry me with them to death.

They spoke to the fugitive in my heart as if it were leaf to leaf.** But it was no reason I had to go because they had to go. Now up my knee to keep on top of another year of snow.**
 * They tapped at my eyelids and touched my lips with an invitation to grief.

Similar to the previous poem, this poem describes the time of the seasons when leaves that have been on the trees all year long have to fall. The narrator talks about walking on leaves all day long. He describes leaves that were over his head during the summer and that are now underneath his feet, so he concludes that they have had to fall past him to reach the ground where they lay now. While describing the fall of the leaves from the tree, past him, to the ground he personifies the leaves as an antagonist trying to bring him down with them. Once again he writes about the cycle of leaves being alive and above him and then dying and being below him, which he parallels to the cycle of life and death that he has been so very present in people around him throughout his life. Frost personifies the leaves in the second and third stanzas as he describes how they were "threatening" him and "tapped at his eyelids and touched his lips". It seems that he could be using the leaves to personify thoughts of death and suicide. He outright says in the last line of the second paragraph that it seemed as if the leaves had a will to carry him to death. In the last stanza he says the leaves spoke to the "fugitive" in his heart, meaning that in his heart he had the desire to escape his life and go with the leaves into the ground to die. Continuing to personify the leaves to represent thoughts of suicide, he writes that "they tapped at my eyelids and touched my lips with an invitation to grief." Finally Frost reveals that he overcomes his struggle with the leaves, or thoughts of suicide, and resolves that he does not have to go down with them, or die. Through this poem we can see how Frost struggled with thoughts of death as other people around him were dying, but did actually resolve to persevere through life. This poem, like "In Hardwood Groves", makes me think of circumstances and people in life that are present in our lives for a while but have to leave our lives eventually. However, Frost explains that we don't have to succumb to grief or wish that we were with them as he writes "But it was no reason I had to go because they had to go." These two poems help me comprehend the greater purpose in the passing of time that is represented by the falling leaf.


 * [[image:flower-in-the-tree-.jpg width="325" height="358" align="right"]]"Leaves Compared with Flowers"

A tree's leaves may be ever so good, So may its bar, so may its wood; But unless you put the right thing to its root It never will show much flower or fruit.

But I may be one who does not care Ever to have tree bloom or bear. Leaves for smooth and bark for rough, Leaves and bark may be tree enough.

Some giant trees have bloom so small They might as will have none at all. Late in life I have come on fern. Now lichens are due to have their turn.

I bade men tell me which in brief, Which is fairer, flower or leaf. They did not have the wit to say, Leaves by night and flowers by day.

Leaves and bar, leaves and bark, To lean against and hear in the dark. Petals I may have once pursued. Leaves are all my darker mood.**

A literal reading of this poem describes the narrators dialogue about a tree and its ability to produce flowers. The narrator wonders if simply bark and leaves are enough to be beautiful or if flowers are needed for beauty to be perceived in a tree. It seems like the narrator does resolve that "leaves and bark may be tree enough" in the second stanza. He says that "but I may be one who does not care/Ever to have tree bloom or bear." Here he does not rule out that the rest of the world desires the beauty in a flower, however he says that he personally does not need it. Still though, in the last stanza before the end of the poem he admits that "Petals I may have once pursued." This line allows us to see that at one time he did desire beauty but overtime he has become devoid of the presence and desire of that beauty. Another line that clues us in to this is in the second stanza where he relates himself to a "fern" late in life. A fern is a plant that is flowerless and simple. By comparing himself to this plant he is saying that his life is without beauty. The line above the comparison makes it seem as if he has given up hope on beauty during some point in his life because he says some trees are so big that it isn't even worth it for them to have the tiny blooms that they do. I wonder if Frost's dark,hard life that was filled with death all around him had something to do with this attitude. Life, which is huge like the tree, has little glimpses of beauty, but overall it is so unremarkable that the glimpses of beauty, or the flowers, end up being insignificant. Some people, and possible Frost at the time he wrote this poem, cannot see the beauty inspite of all the darkness that is going on and they come to believe that darkness is what is normal in life. I think the last two lines of the poem is the most insightful into Frost's life because he says that he once pursued this beauty, the flowers, but now he has settled for the darkness, the leaves. I think that this happens to a lot of people over the course of life. They get so run down that they lose hope for the good things in life and settle for the unremarkable because they think that pursuing the remarkable just isn't worth it. I hope that I never reach that point in my life.

**"The Sound of Trees"**



Why do we wish to bear Forever the noise of these More than another noise So close to our dwelling place? We suffer them day by day Till we lose all measure of pace, And fixity in our joys, And acquire a listening air. They are that that talks of going But never gets away; And that talks no less for knowing As it grows wiser and older, That now it means to stay. My feet tug at the floor And my head sways to my shoulder Sometime when I watch trees sway, From the window or the door. I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some day when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on. I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone.** Literally, the narrator of this poem talks about the noise that the trees outside his home make and says that the trees are always there and always talking. He writes about them as if they are a disturbance and annoyance to him, which steal his attention. He describes what he feels as he watches and listens to them; he says the trees make him want to do something that they cannot- they make him want to leave and get away from the place he has always been. Similar to other Frost poems, the trees are personified in this poem also. In this poem he ascribes the trees the ability to talk and reason when he says that the trees always talk about going but never really do, and how they continue to age and mature but talk no less than they always have before. The trees cause the narrator to stop and reflect as he watches them and he seems to relate to the trees. The narrator says that as he watches the trees sway his "head sways", showing how he mimics the movement of the tree and relates to it. After watching the trees and listening to them, the narrator is motivated to be different from them. He decides that he will make the reckless choice and go somewhere else than he has been before. He doesn't want to be like the tree that grows older but always stays in the same place. At the beginning of the poem Frost writes that the poems grow older and wiser but talk no less and never get away, and at the end of them poem he says the he will have less to say, implying he will get older and wiser, but he will be gone, unlike the trees. The trees seem to serve as inspiration for the narrator to keep pushing forward to new and different experiences in life rather than staying in the same place while always wishing to get away and eventually never being able to. I like this poem because I value new and different experiences in new places and have seen the purpose of them in my life. In a way I will always be like the tree that is tied to its home by its roots because of all my family, however I will always relate to the narrator and feel the need to make a reckless choice and set off for somewhere new. This is a feeling that I've battled over the past semester trying to decide where to live after graduation. All my roots are tying me to home and trying to keep me here, but in the end I've made the same decision of the narrator to strike off to a new place, as I will be moving to Colorado in May in search of something new and different to experience than what I've always known here in the Upstate of South Carolina.
 * I wonder about the trees.


 * [[image:golden_leaves.jpg width="384" height="288" align="right"]]"Nothing Gold Can Stay"

Natures first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. The leaf subside to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.**

In this poem Robert Frost continues to use nature, specifically leaves and trees, as a metaphor for life, death, and loss. When literally read, this poem describes processes in nature. The growth of nature and how it first seems gold but only for a while before it turns green, then how some plants grow flowers right before they grow leaves, and how dawn turns to day. The poem is about loss, which Frost experienced more of his fair share of during his life. The poem describes several processions of loss. The loss of golden color to green color, the loss of flower to leaf, the loss of joy to grief, the loss of dawn to day. Frost does not just say what he lost in this metaphor but also says what the loss has turned to, which is what he has gained. It seems like through this poem he expresses the understanding that life is a constant process and cycle that is always moving, revolving, and growing. Something or someone might be present for a while but it can't stay forever. As it seems like in many of Frost's poems about nature he is using it to understand and cope with death and loss in his own life. This poem helps me to understand the fact of life that there will be loss of golden things in my life and it helps me to cope with the fact of it by understanding that it is a fact of life and everything and everyone experiences it.

All poems retrieved from: Untermeyer, Louis, ed. __New Enlarged Anthology of Robert Frost's Poems__. New York: Washington Square Press, n.d.