Robert Frost was one of America’s greatest poets. His work holds the unique position of being beloved by many, while also being held in esteem by critics and academics.
Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco, in 1874. Frost’s mother moved the family to Massachusetts after her husband died when Robert was eleven years old.
His first poem to be published was for his high school’s magazine. Frost attended Dartmouth University for a few months, but left to teach, work other jobs, and help his mother who was teaching boys.
At age 20, Frost sold a poem to the New York Independent. He was proud of this and soon proposed to the love of his life, Elinor. She didn’t accept at that moment; wanting to complete her own college education, but would marry Robert a year later.
Frost became involved in running the farm that his grandfather gave as a gift. All the while, he was writing poems; inspired by his love and feel for the land and the people. The couple had six children. Their firstborn, Elliot, died at age 7 of cholera. A daughter, Elinor Miriam, died after only a few days. Sadly, two other children would pass away tragically after reaching adulthood.
In 1912, the Frosts moved to England. There, the American poet was warmly accepted by contemporaries Edward Thomas and Ezra Pound. It was Thomas who inspired Frost’s great poem “The Road Not Taken.”
After returning to the U.S. in 1915, Frost devoted his life to his writing and teaching. His beloved wife passed away in 1938. Frost continued to write and inspire writers for the next 25 years of his life.
Frost was awarded four Pulitzer Prizes, the Congressional Gold Medal, was Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, and was chosen by President John F. Kennedy to read at his inauguration.
What made this poet special was that in a world that seemed filled with dark clouds, he didn’t succumb to tragedy and sadness. He saw beyond this and he walked his own way through it. In, perhaps, his greatest poem, he ends with:
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.