Robert Frost (Writer)

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound — that he will never get over it. ➡

Most of the change we think we see in life Is due to truths being in and out of favor. ➡

We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? Do we know any better where we are, And how it stands between the night tonight And a man with a smoky lantern chimney? How different from the way it ever stood? ➡

Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing. ➡

Summoning artists to participate In the august occasions of the state Seems something artists ought to celebrate. Today is for my cause a day of days. ➡

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on. ➡

The best way out is always through. ➡

"I had a lover's quarrel with the world.":engraved on his tomb at Bennington in Vermont, excerpt of the last line from the poem: "The Lesson for Today" (1942), in the collection of the same year "A Witness Tree" ➡

Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with. ➡

The world is full of willing people, some willing to , the rest willing to let them. ➡

To be social is to be forgiving. ➡

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. ➡

We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows. ➡

Ends and beginnings—there are no such things. There are only middles. ➡

There may be little or much beyond the grave, But the strong are saying nothing until they see. ➡

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. ➡

We disparage reason. But all the time it’s what we’re most concerned with. There’s will as motor and there’s will as brakes. Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear. ➡

Men work together, wether they work together or apart. ➡

All is an interminable chain of longing. ➡

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. ➡

I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep. ➡

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. ➡

“Men work together,” I told him from the heart, “Whether they work together or apart.” ➡

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving. ➡

I do not see why I should e'er turn back, Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear. They would not find me changed from him they knew — Only more sure of all I thought was true. ➡

Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season? ➡

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha’n’t be gone long. — You come too. ➡

And nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope. ➡

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in. ➡

The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes 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 pretence of 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 they understand. ➡

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape. ➡

Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense. ➡

A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words. ➡

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. ➡

The Hyla breed That shouted in the mist a month ago, Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow. ➡

We love the things we love for what they are. ➡

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. ➡

“My dear, It’s who first thought the thought. You’re searching, Joe,For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings—there are no such things. There are only middles. ➡

I’d like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love: I don’t know where it’s likely to go better. ➡

I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back.One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. ➡

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. ➡

Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes have to seem So much more businesslike than businessmen. Their wares are so much harder to get rid of. ➡

The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight; New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil. ➡

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

The snake stood up for evil in the Garden. ➡

Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue. ➡

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. ➡

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust ofFrom a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued. ➡

And then we saw him bolt. We heard the miniature thunder where he fled, And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and gray, Like a shadow across instead of behind the flakes. ➡

Love at the lips was touch As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air ➡

Now no joy but lacks salt, That is not dashed with pain And weariness and fault; I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove. ➡

How often already you've had to be told, Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold. Dread fifty above more than fifty below. I have to be gone for a season or so. ➡

You could not tell, and yet it looked as if The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff, The cliff in being backed by continent; It looked as if a night of dark intent Was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage. There would be more than ocean-water broken Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken. ➡

Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me. ➡

That day she put our heads together, Fate had her imagination about her, Your head so much concerned with outer, Mine with inner, weather. ➡

One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. ➡

If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes Will keep my talk from getting overwise, I'm not the one for putting off the proof. Let it be overwhelming, off a roof And round a corner, blizzard snow for dust, And blind me to a standstill if it must. ➡

Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct. ➡

Don’t join too many gangs. Join few if any. Join the United States and join the family — But not much in between, unless a college. ➡

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. ➡

The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You ➡

But yield who will to their separation,My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For heaven and the future ➡

No memory of having starred Atones for later disregard, Or keeps the end from being hard. Better to go down dignified With boughten friendship at your side Than none at all. Provide, provide! ➡

The old dog barks backward without getting up; I can remember when he was a pup. ➡

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second. My mouth is sealed for the duration of my stay here. I'm not even going to write letters around to explain to collectors my not having had any Christmas card this year. I'm not going to explain anything personal any more. ➡

When I see young men doing so wonderfully well in athletics, I don’t feel angry at them. I feel jealous of them. I wish that some of my boys in writing would do the same thing. … You must have form — performance. The thing itself is indescribable, but it is felt like athletic form. To have form, feel form in sports — and by analogy feel form in verse. One works and waits for form in both. As I said, the person who spends his time criticizing the play around him will never write poetry. He will write criticism — for the . ➡

The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. ➡

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become. ➡

She is as in a field a silken tent At midday when the sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, So that in guys it gently sways at ease. ➡

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To every thing on earth the compass round, And only by one's going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightest bondage made aware. ➡

'" makes up in height for what it lacks in length. ➡

Far in the pillared dark Thrush music went — Almost like a call to come in To the dark and lament. But no, I was out for stars; I would not come in. I meant not even if asked; And I hadn't been. ➡

If this uncertain age in which we dwell Were really as dark as I hear sages tell, And I convinced that they were really sages, I should not curse myself with it to hell. ➡

And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone:I had a lover's quarrel with the world. ➡

We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. ➡

Have I not walked without an upward look Of caution under stars that very well Might not have missed me when they shot and fell? It was a risk I had to take — and took. ➡

I stopped my song and almost heart, For any eye is an evil eye That looks in onto a mood apart. ➡

All those who try to go it sole alone, Too proud to be beholden for relief, Are absolutely sure to come to grief. ➡

Courage is of the heart by derivation, And great it is. But fear is of the soul. ➡

O Star (the fairest one in sight) We grant your loftiness the right To some obscurity of cloud — It will not do to say of night, Since dark is what brings out your light. Some mystery becomes the proud. But to be wholly taciturn In your reserve is not allowed.Say something to us that we can learn By heart and when alone repeat. Say something! And it says "I burn." ➡

It asks a little of us here. It asks of us a certain height. So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may take something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid. ➡

Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs. ➡

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair. ➡

People are inexterminable — like flies and bed-bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices — that’s us. ➡

How many times it thundered beforetook the hint! How many apples fell on 's head before he took the hint!is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint. ➡

It is only a moment here and a moment there that the greatest writer has. Some cognizance of the fact must be taken in your teaching. ➡

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat. ➡

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. ➡

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me. ➡

I am assured at any rate Man's practically inexterminate. Someday I must go into that. There's always been an Ararat Where someone someone else begat To start the world all over at. ➡

It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling To get adapted to my kind of fooling. ➡

Unless I'm wrong I but obey The urge of a song: I'm—bound—away! And I may return If dissatisfied With what I learn From having died. ➡

You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s. He’s more particular.... The father is always a Republican towards his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat. ➡

All out of doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. ➡

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. ➡

"Don't let him cut my hand off— The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!" So. But the hand was gone already. ➡

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 out At one door as we entered at another. ➡

Her crop was a miscellany When all was said and done, A little bit of everything, A great deal of none. ➡

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on. ➡

She drew back; he was calm "It is this that had the power," And he lashed his open palm With the tender-headed flower. ➡