Themes of Nature in the Poems of Robert Frost
Themes of Nature in the Poems of Robert Frost
“Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, but never earned a formal degree. In 1895, Frost married Elinor Mirian White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. By the nineteen twenties he was the most celebrated poet in America, with each new book his fame and honors increased. Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died on January 29, 1963, in Boston,”(American Poets).
In his poetry Robert Frost addresses many aspects of life. His poems range from love to humor, and to fear and rage. The themes of the poems are brought about in many ways. Many of his poems are influenced by nature. In the poems “Never again Would Bird’s Song Be the Same,” “Desert Places,” “The Road Not Taken,” and “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Frost uses nature as figures of speech to establish the overall themes of the poems. The use of nature in Frosts poems is used in many ways to express the overall feeling and meaning of the entire poems.
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In the poem “Desert Places,” Frost uses nature to express the thoughts and feelings of the speaker. The speaker is sitting in his home looking outside into a dark snowy night. There is absolutely nothing living that is visible. It is empty and lonely outside. The speaker refers to animals in their lairs hidden away from the loneliness. It seems the speaker is envious of these animals because they can escape their desert places but he can’t escape his. The entire poem makes it seem that he fears being outside alone or off in space with nothing around. The last two lines of the poem however give the poem a whole new meaning. “The speaker generalizes about the scene: its loneliness will only intensify before it decreases,”(Kemp). All of the places that the speaker speaks of throughout the poem do not bother him. The last two lines formulate the thesis of the...