­
Browse The Curriculum

Author: Robert Frost

One of America’s most celebrated poets, Robert Lee Frost (1874–1963) was born in San Francisco in 1874 and moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts as a child. He attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, but left without graduating to help support his family by working odd jobs. Frost returned to poetry in 1894 when he sold his first poem, “My Butterfly.” He married a year later and moved to a farm in Derry, New Hampshire. Inspired by his surroundings, Frost began using the imagery and themes of life in rural New England to explore profound philosophical questions in his poems. Frost and his family relocated to England in 1912 where he published his first two books. Frost returned to New Hampshire at the outbreak of World War I and embarked on a nearly forty-year collegiate teaching career. In 1924, Frost won his first Pulitzer Prize for his volume of poems, New Hampshire, and he would go on to win the award three more times over the next two decades. Frost served as the Poet Laureate for the United States from 1958 to 1959.

America is Hard to See

Robert Frost

In this 1951 poem, first published in The Atlantic as “And All We Call American,” poet laureate Robert Frost (1874–1963), unlike many of our other authors, takes a rather iconoclastic approach, both to the achievement of Columbus and to the American “new world” that it made possible.

Christmas Trees: A Christmas Circular Letter

Robert Frost
This 1916 poem by Robert Frost was written for use on the Frost family’s handmade Christmas cards. It imagines an encounter between a farmer and a man from the city who is interested in purchasing the trees on his land.

Mending Wall

Robert Frost

First published in 1915 as part of Frost’s second collection of poetry, North of Boston, the poem, written in blank verse, describes how two neighbors come together each spring to fix a stone wall that divides their property. 

Not to Keep

Robert Frost

This poem by Robert Frost (1874–1963) examines the emotions caused by a wounded soldier’s homecoming and his return to war once his wounds have healed.