Nature in Robert Frost

Nature possesses a great place in Frost’s poetry. Most of his poems use nature imagery and devices. Taking nature as a background, he usually begins a poem with an observation of something in nature and then moves toward a connection to some human situation or concern. His treatment of nature is different from other nature poets: he is neither a transcendentalist nor a pantheist. Therefore, his use of nature is the single most misunderstood element of his poetry. Frost himself said over and over,

"I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems."

(frostfriends.org)

The elements and settings of Frost’s poetry are natural. Wikipedia comments on his setting,

“His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century.”(wikipedia).

The rural scenes and landscapes, homely farmers, and the natural world are used to illustrate a psychological struggle with everyday experience in the context of  everyday American life and psychology as well as his personal. Primarily, the names of some of his poems indicate his treatment of nature: “Mowing” “The Tuft of Flowers” “Mending Wall” “Home Burial” “After Apple-Picking” “The Wood-Pile” “The Road Not Taken” “Birches” “Fire and Ice” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” , “The Pasture”

Many people assume that the speaker in Frosts poems is Frost himself. But it is actually a brilliant artistic creation, a “persona” or mask which conforms with the landscape of his poems. The editor of Northon Anthology in his introduction to Frost’s selection states that

he worked individual poems into a larger unity by presenting in them a recurrent speaker, a wise country person living close to nature and approaching life in a spirit of compassionate realism.

          Thus Frost’s depiction of his landscape is very much realistic. The beauty of Nature and obligations of human life are treated by Frost as two aspects of poet’s one whole experience. In the following lines the poet describes the helplessness of the poet who has no time because of his social commitments, though he has been almost spell-bound by the beauty and the mystery of the snow which has filled woods:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

[Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening]

For this reason, Encyclopædia Britannica writes about him,

He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life [and his command of American colloquial speech.]

Robert Frost’s poetry is notable for its descriptive power which runs through imagery drawn from natural phenomenon. Schneider says

“The descriptive power of Mr. Frost is to me the most wonderful thing in his poetry. A snowfall, a spring thaw, a bending tree, a valley mist, a brook, these are brought into the experience of the reader”. (Quoted in Wagner-Martin, 97)

Follow the following images:

“And life is too much like a pathless wood” (Birches)

“The world of hoary grass” (After Apple Picking)

“A leaping tongue of bloom” (The Tuft of Flower)

In many of his poems, Frost uses nature as metaphor. He observes something in nature and says this is like that. He leads you to make a connection, but never forces it on the reader. Frost(1946) himself writes about his use of metaphor,

“There are many other things I have found myself saying about poetry, but the chiefest of these is that it is metaphor, saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another, the pleasure of ulteriority.”

Such a metaphoric poem from nature is “After Apple-Picking”, about picking apples. But with its ladders pointing “[t]oward heaven still,” with its great weariness, and with its rumination on the harvest, the coming of winter, and inhuman sleep, the reader feels certain that the poem harbors some “ulteriority.” Read the following lines from the poem,

And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.

Actually, the metaphor of the lines has some similarity with our poet Tagore in Sonar Tori,

Frost’s active interaction or encounter between a human speaker and a natural subject or phenomenon culminates in profound realizations or revelations have a variety of results, including self-knowledge, deeper understanding of the human condition, and increased insight into the metaphysical world. For instance, a day of harvesting fruit leads to a new understanding of life’s final sleep, or death, in “After Apple-Picking” (1915).

          “it’s like his/ Long sleep”

But, Frost shows that the indifferent nature could be both generous and malicious to the human world. His attitude is stoical, honest and accepting. Nature helps people reach for new insights, but nature itself does not provide answers. Tuten (2000) comments on Frosts nature,

“Nature exists outside the Self, is formed there and has existence beyond the idealistic notion that thought determines reality.”

Actually Frost’s nature is different from Wordsworth who sees nature as

          “The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

          The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul                 

           Of all my moral being.” (TINTERN ABBEY, 109-111)

Works Cited:

http://www.frostfriends.org/tutorial-4.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost

"Robert Frost". Encyclopædia Britannica (Online edition ed.). 2008. Retrieved 2008-12-21.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. Robert Frost: the critical reception. The University of Michigan: B. Franklin, 1977

(Robert Frost, “The Constant Symbol,” Atlantic Monthly, CLXX VIII, October, 1946, p. 50)

Tuten, Nancy Lewis and Zubizarreta, John, eds. “Frost and Philosophy.” The Robert Frost Encyclopedia. New York: Greenwood Press, 2000.