(March 24, 1874–January 29, 1963), was an American poet and teacher. He had been a farmer in New Hampshire; taught at Amherst College; was poet in residence at the University of Michigan; and professor of poetry at Harvard University, 1936. He won the Pulitzer prize for poetry, 1924, 1931, 1937, and 1943; was named consultant in poetry for the Library of Congress; and received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960. His works include: A Boy’s Will, 1913; North of Boston, 1914; Mountain Interval, 1916; 2 1928; A Way Out, 1929; From Snow to Snow, 1936; A Witness Tree, 1942; Masque of Reason, 1945; Steeple Bush, 1947; Complete Poems, 1949; and The Road Not Taken, 1951.
In a comment broadcast on WQED, Pittsburgh, quoted in Collier’s, April 27, 1956, Robert Frost stated:
Ultimately, this is what you go before God for: You’ve had bad luck and good luck and all you really want in the end is mercy.3214
In “The Road Not Taken” (1951), Robert Frost wrote:
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.3215
In the poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Robert Frost wrote:
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 lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He give his harness bell 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 before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.3216