AN EXPLORATION OF THE STRATUMS OF DELIGHT AND WISDOM IN THE POETRY OF

1Mohammad Tajuddin, 2Md. Nazmul Huda 1&2 Assistant Professors,Department of English Language and Literature, International Islamic University Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Based on one single comment of Robert Frost (1874-1963) about his poetry, “A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom”, the paper explores how the stratums of delight and wisdom of his poems are produced, and also it argues that because of Frost‟s commonsense style and convincing portrayal of universal values and truth of common humanity, the poetry of Frost becomes the source of delight and wisdom for the readers. To explore the question or point already stated, some of the best poems of the poet, with special focus on the forms and styles used by Frost, have been taken into consideration, along with available critical approaches to the poet. Not only that, few of the earlier comments of the different school of poetry- from Aristotle to Horace onwards- have been engaged to analyze and answer the question Frost has produced by the comment about his own poems in particular and the poetry in general. This paper also focuses the fact that the delight and wisdom of Frost‟s poems are derived not only from stylistic forms of his poetry but also from his inner experience of human soul and mind and outer observation of life and nature. Though the realm of Frost‟s poetry basically presents a bleak picture of reality and human life, with seemingly occasional delightful picture of nature, it becomes a great source of delight and wisdom because of Frost‟s truthful presentation of life, human values and nature. Thus this paper explores the issue of delight and wisdom in the poetry of Robert Frost.

KEYWORDS: Poetry of Robert Frost, Delight and wisdom, forms and styles, presentation of truth, function of poetry, commonsense style.

INTRODUCTION so called ideal state of Plato. Aristotle, who calls dramatic poetry as imitation, disagrees with Plato in Robert Frost says, “a poem begins in delight and ends the sense that poetry as imitation presents the truth in wisdom.” If we investigate into this statement in and every truth is beautiful and source of delight. For the light of his poems, we find the saying to be more Aristotle, as he mentioned in his Poetics, the value of expressive than practical theory. Regarding poetry poetry lies in its presentation of truth through the and its nature and function, some such theoretical imitation, a process the poets undertake while writing statements date back at least four hundred B. C. with poems. Every truth virtually becomes the source of Plato and Aristotle and then Horace and so on and so delight and pleasure, just as Keats says, “Beauty is forth. Aristotle first disagreed with his teacher and truth, truth beauty…” or the statement of 17th century mentor Plato regarding the value of poets and poetry. French philosopher Descartes: “there is no beauty Plato never supported the presence of poets and than the beauty of truth.” For Francis Bacon, in his poetry in his so called Ideal State, because they copy essay “of Truth”, viewing truth gives immense just images of reality which are, according to Plato, pleasure to someone. Viewing truth from a vintage mere falsehood or Shadows not substance. Therefore, point of life, as Bacon says, is similar to enjoying a poets, sculptors and painters are not welcome in the view of storm, sweeping below, from the top of the

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valley. Supposedly, from Frost‟s statement, “a poem These two types of meanings affirm the fact that begins in delight and ends in wisdom” we can assert Frost does claim for poetry a double function: that Frost aims at two things, delight and wisdom, for delighting and teaching at the same time as narrated his poetry. Though Frost actually had no theoretical by Roman poet Horace, and Wordsworth in his purpose to narrate, like Horace, Dryden, Wordsworth Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth, and Coleridge or Arnold; the value of his statement is however, unlike Frost, expressed high notion of truly realized and understood through the expressive poetry and described poetry as the finer spirit of nature of his poems. The delight and wisdom of mankind. On the other hand, Frost described poetry Frost‟s poems are derived from various things, from as something capable of giving same pattern of his commonsense and plain expressive style, through meaning to human life as history and science can the faithful imitation of the truth of life derived from give. his inner as well as outer experience of the nature and human life. Frost‟s poem, “The Pasture”, which Frost included at the beginning of every collection of his poetry, can OBJECTIVE be a good example of his expressive and commonsense style as well as the source of delight Based on one of Frost‟s comments: “A poem begins and wisdom. The village farmer who is the „persona‟ in delight and ends in wisdom” this paper explores of the poem plainly talks about his daily activities the stratums or the levels of wisdom, delight and with a sense of delight narrating at the same time the commonsense tendency of Frost‟s poems to see how delightful bucolic atmosphere in the sight of “pasture they are produced in the poetry of Robert Frost. This spring” and a “little calf” tottering beside its mother. paper argues for the fact that these are derived from But each stanza ends with wisdom, which actually various things as Frost inculcated in his poetry means, deep understanding of life, expressing the besides the poet‟s truthful presentation of human life limitations of human life: “I sha‟nt be gone long”. and nature. The farmer enjoys his life with simple activities within the domain of his farm though he cannot go DISCUSSION AND FINDINGS beyond:

Frost believes in good sense in the creative process of I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; poetry. He also believes in the good control of mind I'll only stop to rake the leaves away over emotion while writing a poem. This means that (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): the content and the form must be harmonious so that I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too. a poem is created with a good sense and sound. Delight and wisdom may be derived from such I'm going out to fetch the little calf logical combination of thought and emotion. So Frost That's standing by the mother. It's so young, will not sacrifice form for content or vice versa is It totters when she licks it with her tongue. again testified in his aiming to make a new sort of I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too. “music” in his poetry which he ambiguously calls (“The Pasture”) “the sound of sense” (similar to one of Pope‟s line: “The sound must seem an echo to the sense.”). The farmer expresses his delight inviting others; According to William H. Pritchard, the phrase “the “You come too”. The commonsense simplicity of sound of sense” has two meanings: verse, along with deep philosophy of life, creates a sense of delight and wisdom for readers. The phrase may accommodate either an underlining of “sound” or of “sense,” thereby setting up a playful In a deeper level Frost‟s statement “A poem begins in shuttling between the poem as communicating delight and ends in wisdom,” is more expressive in something, some grain of wisdom or truth about the nature than a pragmatic theory of poetry and it is world (the sound of sense) and the poem as wholly virtually a description of his own concept of the embodying that truth through its particular music, so creative process. As Lawrence Thompson has that one is mainly aware of something heard (the pointed out, Frost has said again and again that there sound of sense). (Pritchard, 1984, p.77) is a striking analogy between the course of a true

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poem and of a true love. Each begins as an impulse, recognition of a particularly apt correspondence or a disturbing excitement, and each ends as an analogy” (1962, p. 24). Thus, Thompson sees two understanding: basic approaches of creating poetry in Frost:

No one can really hold that the ecstasy The first begins as an emotional response should be static and stand still in one place. which gradually finds its resolution in a It begins in delight, it inclines to the thought metaphorically expressed; the impulse, it assumes direction with the first second begins with the perception of the line laid down, it runs a course of lucky metaphor, and the rational focus is so events, and ends in a clarification of life— pleasurable in its sudden discovery that it not necessarily a great clarification, such as produces an emotional afterglow. The first sects and cults are founded on, but in a leads the poet to venture into the writing of momentary stay against confusion. It has the poem as an act of faith, without denouement. It has an outcome that though foreseeing the outcome; the second leads the unforeseen was predestined from the first poet to give shape and weight to a rational image of the original mood. (Thompson, correspondence which has been perceived 1962, p. 21) clearly before he begins the writing of the poem. (Thompson, 1962, p. 24) As for the real nature of Frost‟s poetry it may be asserted that the delight and wisdom are not only Also, a poem may be delightful in the two ways, that derived from some descriptions of happy events of is, first, the poet may be happy when he finds the the poet‟s life or nature, but also from the agonizing harmonious bond between his thought and emotion experience of life, while these experiences represent bringing the poem into the state of completion in the greater truth of life. So, delight, wisdom and pain of fulfillment of his effort into expression and second, life are not separated in the poetry of Frost, rather when the readers find the poem as representation of these three are interconnected. Frost once said this, truth and values of human life, and the readers feel too: “A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a likeness with the line(s) of poems they read. This is home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out what, Aristotle emphasizes regarding truthful toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A imitation of life in poetry. However, it can be said, complete poem is one where an emotion has found its the statement “A poem begins in delight and ends in thought and the thought has found the words.” So, it wisdom” is more concerned with his (Frost) creative is clear that the delight springs from the moment of process rather than poet‟s pragmatic concern and the finding the thought for the emotion or finding the functions of poetry. words for the thought. The pleasure of finding a thought is implied in this other famous statement of Though a good number of Frost‟s best poems Frost‟s: “For me the initial delight is in the surprise demonstrate this from-delight-to-wisdom pattern, yet of remembering something I didn‟t know I knew.” this pattern is not all that is creating delight and And the pleasure of finding the words should be wisdom and not also common to all poems. With the extended to cover the poet‟s pleasure in discovering pattern mentioned above “Stopping by Woods on a images, metaphors, and other technical matters Snowy Evening” for example, begins with the constitutive of “form.” Based on this expressive meditative speaker‟s description of a little dramatic theory, Thompson asserts that Frost‟s creative scene which has prompted him into deep thought and process involves two kinds of recognition: “The first it ends with his symbolic understanding: may occur when some experience in the present inspires an emotional recognition that is more a The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, matter of sense impression than of clear mental But I have promises to keep, perception” (Thompson, 1962, P. 22). “The second And miles to go before I sleep, occurs when the emotional pleasure is derived from And miles to go before I sleep. the sudden mental perception of a thought which (“Stopping by Woods on a comes into sharp focus through the discovery and Snowy Evening”)

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There is really no sign of the speaker‟s being equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis delighted in the presence of the scene except the the thought is prior to the form” (1982, P. 33). So in scene of the dark color forest being filled with white writing many best poems of his career Frost arranges color snow which created a very meditative mood of his details in such a way that the main point or idea is evening and magnificent view, the narrator was not revealed until the final lines of a poem arrive. It is enjoying. Further, if there is any delight, it is the as true with “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” author‟s and the reader‟s. The author is delighted to as with “”—another famous poem have found some symbolic meaning in the common of Frost—for instance. Like the former it gains its scene, and he is delighted to be able to put his finding significant weight also in the last lines: in words pleasurable to the reader. On the other hand, the reader is first pleased with the beauty that Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— goes with the verse form and its presented details, I took the one less traveled by, and then pleased with the suggestive ending stanza And that has made all the difference. which represents a sort of insight into life expressing (“The Road Not Taken”) a serious philosophy of life and death. Also in the poems, “Birches” and “Tree at My Window” the last few lines seem to be weighty: But in the poem “Birches”, the most striking lines “That would be good both going and coming back/ occur not in the end but almost in the middle of the One could do worse than be a swinger of birches”( poem. Without taking the pattern: delight to wisdom, Birches) and “Your head so much concerned with the poem expresses the insightful ideas and picture of outer, Mine with inner, weather”( Tree at My the truth of life earlier rather than in the end of the Window). whole poem: What Frost says about metaphor is crucial to So was I once myself a swinger of birches. understanding of his poetry as well as the stratum of And so I dream of going back to be. delight and wisdom as his poems reveal. Frost writes: It's when I'm weary of considerations, “Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying And life is too much like a pathless wood one thing and meaning another”. By showing Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs relationships between two apparently unrelated Broken across it, and one eye is weeping things, it is a means of presenting patterns in life. From a twig's having lashed across it open. Because metaphor is a means of making one see (“Birches”) patterns, and because poetry is the most metaphorical Though these few lines produce grim and bleak picture of all mode of expression, the study of poetry of life, yet they are delightful in the sense that the becomes necessary to make sense of the world and to metaphor of “Pathless wood”, as compared with human make structures. Just as one can only go so far in life and its uncertainty, is vivid and truthful. Also, the making order of chaos in one‟s own life, so too a narrator‟s understanding; “Earth is the right place for metaphor can only help create a certain degree of love: I do not know where it‟s likely to go better” does unity in a poem. Therefore, Frost wants to say that in not necessarily occur in the last lines. As Aristotle says, acquiring judgment in the study of poetry the reader the more perfect is imitation, the higher is the pleasure. is learning to judge interpretations of life. Thus Frost emphasizes here the functions of poetry related with According to Philip L. Gerber, for Frost, the essential his comment on metaphor. Also, thus his simple poem combines a homogeneous unity of three parts: poem, even written in the simplest way and language, the point or idea, the details, and the technique (Gerber, becomes metaphorical with a larger and deep 1982, p. 92). The poet is delighted to get the point or meaning or various meanings in the harmonious unity idea, and he is equally delighted to find the details and of form and content. For example the simple poems, the technique to present the point or idea. So the “The Pasture” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy ultimate end of poetry is wisdom rather than delight. Evening” though written in simple way, express deep Unlike Wordsworth, Frost simply agrees with Emerson philosophy of life and death. In realizing the truth that “it is not meters, but a meter-making argument that and understanding of the pattern of life through the makes a poem”, and that “the thought and the form are „patterned poems‟, the heart of the readers becomes

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delighted and enlightened with wisdom. Thus, Frost‟s the “hasty readers” at times, for the poet it is the poems also highlight the benefit of reading poetry in necessary preparation for the delightful moment of human life, as if Frost were also supporting the denouement. The poem “Birches”, for example, position of giving education through poetry like, begins with a normal plain narrative of „the matter of Dryden and Wordsworth. To Frost, as all men fact‟ of nature as the poet experiences it until the attempt, a poet is one who tries to see the relationship narrative takes into its new turn of the philosophical between the spiritual and the material realms of and symbolic meanings. existence, the tangible and the intangible. Every man tries to see the significance of the passing moment, to Robert Frost must have been influenced by English see meaning in his life, to see metaphorically. Frost romantic poet William Wordsworth. But Frost is presents characters and incidents which he finds unlike Wordsworth in the sense that the realm of symbolic of life‟s larger meanings. By giving a Frost‟s nature poems is gloomy and dark as opposed partial clarification of life through his metaphors, he to the sunny, idealistic and “visionary romanticism” is able to make a „momentary stay against confusion.‟ (Albert, 2002, p. 251) of Wordsworth. Like Often, however, his characters are unable to see their Wordsworth, Frost does not portray nature as a own situations in larger perspective. So their lives are benign mother for the consolation or solace of human meaningless and they are “lost souls.” Though it is heart, rather nature is sometimes hostile and impossible to unify completely the material and indifferent to human suffering. Also, in the poetry of spiritual planes of existence, the poet is one who Frost nature becomes sometimes a source of fear and tries: Frost writes about everything as follow: anxiety. Perhaps, it is because of the tragedy of Frost‟s own life that involves the early death of his Greatest of all attempts to say one thing in father and subsequent death of his mother, and later terms of another is the philosophical attempt the suicide of his own adult son, Frost had developed to say matter in terms of spirit and spirit in a grim picture of life in the nature poems. It is said terms of matter, to make the final unity. That that Frost himself had a suicidal mental makeup is the greatest attempt that never failed. We which he faced and struggled to tackle throughout his just stop short there. But it is the height of life. Also, Wordsworth and Frost bear the sign of poetry, the height of all thinking, the height their love for pastoral setting, nature, and ballad. In of all poetic thinking, that attempt to say their treatment of nature Frost, perhaps, is more matter in terms of spirit and spirit in terms realistic than Wordsworth as Frost has portrayed of matter… the only materialist---be he poet, nature as it is unlike Wordsworth, who has rather teacher, scientist, politician or statesman--- portrayed nature as something supernatural entity. is the man who gets lost in his material While comparing the two poets in an essay, however, without a gathering metaphor to throw it Sydney Lea has detected the tendency that into shape and order. He is the lost soul. Wordsworth‟s pastoral “sublime” has dropped down to Frost‟s common “rigmarole”(Sydney,1986, pp,85- In a book called Literary History of the United States, 110). In spite of Frost‟s occasional prosaic language Frost is said to be “a metaphysical poet in the actually Frost is no less sublime than Wordsworth in tradition of Emerson and Emily Dickinson (Spiller, trying to elevate the vulgar into the high realm of 1963, p.1191)‟‟ and also is mentioned that in Frost‟s truth from the routine everyday life. Read the few poem “hasty readers, noting only the quiet beginning lines from poem, “Stars”: in what appears to be a simple anecdote about a person, event, or object commonly enough observed, How countlessly they congregate fail to see how the commonness gradually disappears O'er our tumultuous snow, or, better, how it becomes transfigured” (1963, Which flows in shapes as tall as trees p.1191). It is also said that the most dramatic moment When wintry winds do blow!- in a Frost poem is the kind of denouement when the As if with keenness for our fate, mundane fact achieves its full metaphysical Our faltering few steps on significance (1963, p. 1191). Though the “quiet To white rest, and a place of rest beginning” is really insipid rather than delightful for Invisible at dawn,--

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And yet with neither love nor hate, feel of themselves as addresses. For example, in Those stars like some snow-white “Mowing”, the speaker who is supposedly a farmer, Minerva's snow-white marble eyes while working alone beside the woods in the Without the gift of sight. atmosphere of silence and loneliness, fell suddenly (“Stars”) victim of his own fancy and thinking and began to question inwardly why the scythe (his tool) was Moreover, what makes Wordsworth different from making sound. Though the poem is a short sonnet, Frost is not their aim, but in their method. They both the speaker seems to be talking to himself, and thus aim to present “truth.” But while Wordsworth revealing his inner self to the readers like a kind of employs the form of “lyrical ballad,” used so called soliloquy. Just read the poem: rustic language Frost adopts largely the technique of the so-called “conversation piece” sometimes using There was never a sound beside the wood but one, colloquial words. Coleridge‟s “conversation poems,” And that was my long scythe whispering to the such as “Frost at Midnight,” and “The Nightingale,” ground. are better than those of Wordsworth. Coleridge‟s What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,” etc., are poems Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, in which the poet pretends to be talking to someone Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound— familiar to him (his son, friend, etc.). Such poems And that was why it whispered and did not speak. have a typical structure. According to John Colmer: It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf The structure consists of three main Anything more than the truth would have seemed too sections: an introduction in which the poet‟s weak situation is established and the atmosphere To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, miraculously evoked through a few simple Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers details; a central meditative section in which (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. the subtlest modulations of thought and The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.(M emotion are exactly communicated; lastly, a My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make. return to the original situation, but with (“Mowing”) “new acquits of true experience.” And in such a poem, although the diction is Virtually, Frost is following the aim of a conversational, “the effect is not that of “conversation piece,” which is to reveal Truth direct address but rather of overhearing a through describing an observed scene. But while he quiet soliloquy.” (Colmer, 1965, pp. 26-27) keeps the conversational tone and style, he never adopts the structure of a typical “conversation poem.” Regarding Frost‟s conversational verse it may be said He but utilizes the truth-revealing purpose of a that, unlike Coleridge‟s “conversational piece” or conversation piece. Browning‟s dramatic monologue, Frost‟s is a new third type which seems to have developed out of the If we read few lines of the poem “After Apple- “conversation piece” and the dramatic monologue. Picking”, which is regarded as lyrical poem, for Frost‟s poems are not directly addressed to any example, we feel the conversational tone, though this particular individual,(exception in “Tree at My poem is not like his other dramatic poems such as Window” where a tree is addressed) as it happens in “Home Burial” and “The Death of the Hired Man”, a dramatic monologue of Browning such as “My Last which are like dramas and written in a full Duchess” and in the conversational poems of conversational tone. Few lines read as follows: Coleridge such as “The Eolian Harp” or “Frost at Midnight”. But in reading Frost‟s “Birches”, “After My long two-pointed ladder‟s sticking through a tree Apple-Picking” “Mowing” and “The Wood Pile” etc. Toward heaven still we fell that the speaker therein in each poem seems And there‟s a barrel that I didn‟t fill to be speaking to someone, though the addressee is Beside it, and there may be two or three unknown. Here the readers themselves feel the effect Apples I didn‟t pick upon some bough. of an overheard soliloquy. Sometimes, the readers But I am done with apple-picking now…

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(After Apple-Picking) However, some celebrated poems of Frost such as Here the apple-piker is talking to an unspecified “Tree at My Window,” “”, and “A person, unlike a dramatic monologue in the tradition Missive Missile” have something in common with all of Robert Browning in which the imaginary speaker the other poems mentioned or discussed above talks to an imaginary listener or audience. Though the though they are not written in the “conversational speech in both dramatic monologue and monologue” form. But each of the poems bears a conversational piece bears the conversational tone, truth stated or suggested, thus in conformity with the purpose of the both types is quite different. The Frost‟s emphasis on wisdom as the essence of poetry. main purpose of the conversational piece/poem is to reveal general truth of the course of our world and Besides Frost‟s dramatic narratives like “The Death life, whereas the main purpose of a dramatic of the Hired Man,” and “Home Burial”, in many monologue is to reveal, in dramatic irony, things other poems Frost uses conversational language, about the imaginary speaker and/or the people spoken without lyrical meditation, to present the truth of life to or of. and the world. As Aristotle said, the presentation of the truth is the true imitation. Also, truthful imitation According to Elizabeth Isaacs Frost “has used mainly of Truth depends on the nature of language an artist three genres: lyric, dramatic narrative, and satire (a or a poet uses in various situations. In terms of term which is used here to include fable, parable, Frost‟s use of conversational language/tone in many epigram, poetic essay, and sermon etc)” (Isaacs, poems in general and in the dramatic narratives in 1972, P. 83). But the three main genres of Frost‟s particular, it can be asserted that Frost used the poems have more or less the characteristics of conversational language to make everything “conversational monologue.” When many poems are convincing and real to the readers. Many other regarded as lyric poems, they really seem to be more frequently-read poems such as “Two Look at Two,” conversational than being lyrical in their way. “,” “Hyla Brook,” “Out, Out,” “The “” is categorized as a “lyric.”But how Need of Being Versed in Country Things,” “Two much does it sound lyrical while reading? Let us Tramps in Mud Time,” “Design,” and “Closed for read the poem: Good” are really “conversational monologues” in the same manner, with conversational tone, though their Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast verse forms are not the same. In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in There are a lot of examples of the simple and plain snow, conversational language used by Frost in his dramatic But a few weeds and stubble showing last. narratives. The narrator in the poem “The Death of The woods around it have it—it is theirs. the Hired Man” or “Home Burial”, for instance, also All animals are smothered in their lairs. speaks in a plain conversational language, introduces I am too absent-spirited to count; the characters (Mary, and her husband Warren, and The loneliness includes me unawares. the hired man Silas or in “Home Burial” what Amy, And lonely as it is that loneliness the wife, is doing in the beginning of the poem etc.), Will be more lonely ere it will be less— describes the situation they are in, and tells the A blanker whiteness of benighted snow sequence of events throughout the poems in between With no expression, nothing to express. the dialogues of the characters: (Desert Places) Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table Ironically, this poem, in tone, seems to be more Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step, meditative and truth-centered and a “conversational She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage monologue” rather than a lyric poem. Similarly when To meet him in the doorway with the news we read a satire like “Departmental,” we find that it And put him on his guard. “Silas is back.” also follows the basic pattern of scene description (“The Death of the Hired Man”) plus truth revelation, and the language is again conversational. In “Home Burial”, for instance, the narrator also uses plain conversational language in describing Amy, the

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grieved mother who having lost her child, keeps nature of the world (“the world is evil”) in which the standing all the time beside the window looking at course of life and death is constant, which we cannot family graveyard to see the child‟s mound- until one change. Men have to visit the grave yard with the day her husband discovers her there: dead man and his coffin to bury him with sorrowful mind with a passion of shock, but when the dead He saw her from the bottom of the stairs body is put in the grave, the relatives of the dead man Before she saw him. She was starting down, immediately return to their normal life and activities Looking back over her shoulder at some fear. forgetting the dead very soon. The wife (Amy) She took a doubtful step and then undid it cannot easily accept this nature and course of the To raise herself and look again. He spoke world: Advancing toward her: „What is it you see From up there always—for I want to know.‟ No, from the time when one is sick to death, She turned and sank upon her skirts at that, One is alone, and he dies more alone. And her face changed from terrified to dull. …………………………… …… He said to gain time: „What is it you see,‟ Friends make pretense of following to the grave, (“Home Burial”) But before one is in it, their minds are turned Frost uses conversational language in many poems in And making the best of their way back to life general and, of course, used in the dialogues of the And living people, and things they understand. characters in his dramatic narratives in particular. But the world‟s evil. I won‟t have grief so Yet, all the language is again truth-centered and If I can change it. Oh, I won‟t, I won‟t!‟ reveals many truths of human life and the world. (“Home Burial”) Thus the truth-centered language becomes source of In “The Death of the Hired Man” the character of old delight and wisdom for the readers. For example, worker, Silas, is interesting. Silas was arrogant and here the truth is: “Home is the place where, when you very proud and at the same time was a gullible have to go there, / They have to take you in.” The person, who could be easily misguided or coaxed off hired man‟s coming back to die in his former by other. But this arrogant and proud man becomes employer‟s house is to tell us this humanitarian helpless when he comes back his master‟s home to definition of home. die. Mary, the wife of Silas‟s master, describes the helplessness of this old man in the death bed, typically every individual in the world is helpless in Many such lines as tinged with truth of life may be the grip of death no matter how much arrogant and quoted from Frost‟s poems. In “Home Burial”, the proud he is: husband, annoyed by the excessive reactions of his wife due to the death of their first child, realizes that Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk, he must give up his manhood that is, must And nothing to look backward to with pride, compromise for the sake of peaceful family life. And nothing to look forward to with hope, Husband realizes that though he is stronger than his So now and never any different.‟ wife and partly loses his temper because of his wife‟s excessive abnormal behavior, yet he must surrender (“The Death of the Hired Man”) his manliness sometimes to the feminine triviality for the sake of conjugal life: However, Frost has been criticized and perhaps, misunderstood by many because of his over A man must partly give up being a man simplicity of language and conversational language With women-folk. in many poems. For example, about Frost‟s ………………………………… conversational style, Yvor Winters says, “…it has You make me angry. I‟ll come down to you. helped to make “him seem „natural‟. But poetry is not God, what a woman! And it‟s come to this, conversation…Conversation is the most careless and A man can‟t speak of his own child that‟s dead.‟ formless of human utterance ;…”( Winters, 1962, p. (“Home Burial”) 59). But actually Frost‟s conversational technique is Further, the wife (Amy by name), who is greatly not formless and careless all the time. Rather, his shocked at the death of her first child, exposes the most simple poem becomes metaphorical and his

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conversational style becomes natural and true to supposed to be according to the statement- as the reader‟s ear and they (readers) find the faithful delight in the beginning and wisdom in the end of portrayal of life and the human values in the each poem. Sometimes some sentences seem to be imaginative terms. Thus Frost‟s most natural rigmarole in the beginning but sometimes in the conversational poems become source of delight and middle. To enjoy delight and wisdom of the poetry of wisdom. Robert Frost one must not look for these only in the beginning or the end, as one can also find these in the During the time of Robert Frost many great middle of a poem. Moreover, each poem should be modernist literary figures such as Ezra Pound, T.S. considered as a total unit which can provide delight Eliot, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath were practicing and wisdom as a whole when we finish reading a difficult style in their writing. While they were poem. This view is supported by even Frost‟s own experimenting a difficult modernist style in their saying in relation to a poem‟s being a metaphor, poetry, in contrast to them, Robert Frost was busy which according to Frost carries more than one with his so much simple style. So in a review of meaning. When for many readers, the simplicity of poetry Ezra Pound criticized Frost for his simplicity. Frost‟s language with a different kind of intonation In reference to that review what Frost wrote to entangled in different phrases and words may be a Thomas Mosher, a Maine book collector and source of delight, for some the portrayal of the truth publisher, is noteworthy: “You are not going to make of life and the world may be delightful and the mistake that Pound makes of assuming that my enlightening at the same time. simplicity is that of the untutored child. I am not undesigning” (Pritchard, 1984, .pp. 69-70). Really, REFERENCES Frost was not undesigning. 1. Albert, Edward. (2002).History of English Actually Frost has been able to bring forth a „new Literature.5th edition, India: Oxford University Press. free form” in combination with the advantages of traditional verse forms and the modern “free verse”, 2. Aristotle. (1965). On the Art of Poetry, Classical along with his attempt to avoid the disadvantages of Literary Criticism(Ed.) T S Dorsch(Ed..). the modernists‟ experimental forms (Gerber, 1982, London, England: Penguin Books, P. 31-41 P.766).Like the modernists Frost‟s poems have no difficult obscurity, so his poems take the “shape of 3. Bacon, Francis. (2014). “Of Truth”, Bacon‟s sense” for the eyes and “sound of sense” for the ears Essays, and Bartleby.com, retrieved from: together and produce delight and wisdom for the http://www.bartleby.com/3/1/1.html readers. What Horace, the ancient Roman poet and musician, says about imitative art and poetry is 4. Colmer, John. (1965). Coleridge: Selected Poems. applicable to Frost‟s creation of different characters London: Oxford UP. in his poetry. He says, “The experienced poet, as an 5. Dorsch.T.S. (1965). (Trans.). HORACE: on the Art imitative artist, should look to human life and of Poetry, Great Britain: Penguin. characters as his models, and from them derive a language that is true to life” (Dorsch, 1965, p.22). 6. Frost, Robert. (1939). “The Figure a Poem Frost has certainly utilized such language and Makes.” Preface to Collected Poems. New characters in his poems to portray a truthful picture of York: Henry Holt & Co. human life and values with a more convincing language than usual and thus verily made his poetry a 7. Gerber, Philip.(1982). Robert Frost. Revised source of pleasure and wisdom. edition. Boston: Twayne Publishers

CONCLUSION 8. Horace. (1971). “The Art of Poetry.” Critical Theory Since Plato. Ed. Hazard Adams. New In the exploration of the stratums of the delight and York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich . wisdom of the poetry of Frost it has become clear that Frost‟s saying about delight to wisdom pattern does not necessarily appear in all poems as it was

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9. Isaacs, Elizabeth. (1972). An Introduction to Robert Frost. New York: Haskell House.

10. Keats, John. (2014). “Ode on Grecian Urn”, Poetry Foundation, retrieved from:www.poertyfoundation.org/poem/173742

11. Lea, Sydney. (1986). “From Sublime to Rigmarole: Relations of Frost to Wordsworth,” Robert Frost: Modern Critical Views Bloom, Harold Bloom (ed.) New York: Chelsea House Publishers.

12. Pritchard, William H. (1984) Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered. New York: Oxford UP.

13. Spiller, Robert E. et al.( 1963) Literary History of the United States. 3rd edition. New York: The Macmillan Co.

14. Thompson, Lawrance.( 1962). “Robert Frost‟s Theory of Poetry,” Robert Frost: Twentieth- Century Views (ed.) James Cox, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-hall, Inc.

15. Untermeyer, Louis. (1975) (ed.) A Concise Treasury of Great Poems. New York: Pocket Books.

16. Winters, Yvor. (1962) “Robert Frost: or, the Spiritual Drifter as Poet”, Robert Frost: Twentieth-Century Views. E Cox, James M., (ed.), Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-hall, Inc.

The End

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