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University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Spring 1978 THE AX, THE SCYTHE, AND THE PEN: WORK AND LEISURE IN THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST BRUCE HUBBARD GUERNSEY Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation GUERNSEY, BRUCE HUBBARD, "THE AX, THE SCYTHE, AND THE PEN: WORK AND LEISURE IN THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST" (1978). Doctoral Dissertations. 1190. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/1190 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. 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University Microfilms International 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 USA St. John's Road, Tyler's Green High Wycombe, Bucks, England HP10 8HR 782«5<16 GUERNSEY# BRUCE HUBBARD THE AX# THE SCYTHE, AND THE PEN j WORK AND LEISURE IN THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST, UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE# PH.D.# 1978 University Microfilms International' 300 n . z e e b r o a d, an n a r b o r, m i 4 b io 6 © 1978 BRUCE HUBBARD GUERNSEY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED j ° y THE AX, THE SCYTHE, AND THE PEN: WORK AND LEISURE IN THE POETRY OP ROBERT FROST BRUCE GUERNSEY A .B., Colgate U niversity, 1966 M.A., U niversity of V irg inia, 1967 M.A., The Johns Hopkins U niversity, 1971 A DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English May, 1978 ! This dissertation has "been examined and approved. t f l u Q i/ fp l u p & p P ________ Dissertation direcfor, Philip Nicoloff, Professor of English Charles Simic, Associate Professor of English z . C A 1 Charles E. Clark, Professor of History Melvin T. Bohick, Professor of Sociology d,;Uz</: tfry D a t t f Y ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would, like to thank the Graduate School of the University of New Hampshire for its generous financial support during the summers of 1976 and 1977 and during the spring of 1978. Both the summer research grants and the dissertation * fellowship I was awarded enabled me to complete this study with a minimum of difficulty. I would also like to thank the English Department for its continued financial assistance without which I could not have returned to graduate school to begin with. Most especially, I wish to acknowledge the unending support of Professor Carl Dawson who, lik e the oracle, provided wisdom during times of plague and plenty. His secretary, Mary Dargon, I can also never thank enough for her warmth and sympathy. My readers have been perceptive, tough, and thorough. Professors Philip Nicoloff and Gary Lindberg, in particular, have provided exactly that balance of mercy and justice so vital to such a project. I thank all my readers for their promptness and concern. Finally, I must thank my eternally patient wife, Janet, and our two children for enduring the trials of graduate school with me. May whatever I do be found acceptable in their sig h t. iv TABLE OE CONTENTS ABSTRACT............................................................................................. v i PREFACE............................................................................................... ix I. CLEANING THE SPRING..................................................................... 1 I I . OUT- AND INDOOR SCHOOLING....................................................... 19 I I I . A TURN TOO MUCH.............................................................................. 45 IV. A GATHERING METAPHOR.................................................................. 75 V. THE AGITATED HEART....................................................................... 99 VI. AT HOME IN AMERICA....................................................................... 130 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................... 145 v ABSTRACT THE AX, THE SCYTHE, AND THE PEN: WORK AND LEISURE IN THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST "by BRUCE GUERNSEY This study is composed of six chapters and deals with the theme of work and leisure in Robert Frost's poetry. Work is both the subject and the dramatic context of many of his poems and is important to him for the leisure it provides, not in and for itself. Work and leisure ideally belong together for Frost; like the eyes, they make one in sight. They are the rhythmic beating of the healthy heart. Leisure is not an experience that excludes work, in other words, not a vacation in the mountains or factory coffee-break, but part of work itself. It is a creative moment and an opportunity for vision, for bringing order from chaos. Frost once said that bis three favorite tools were the ax, the scythe, and the pen. Each of these is an instrument of clearing, of the land and of the language, and clearing is an experience Frost continually renews in his poems. It is his central metaphor, as it was, he believed, for the first settlers in New England. Puritanism meant "to purify" for Frost, and he chose to be a New Englander because he saw in the remnants of the Puritan experience something of himself. As the first colonists cleared the land to survive and to drive v i the devil from the wilderness, so too did Frost wish to chase more personal devils from his mind. Seeing members of his family driven to breakdown and suicide, the poet was haunted by the fear of his own madness. To maintain himself emotionally was his goal in life; he wished to be a whole man in the Greek sense, healthy in body and mind. The writing of poetry was his way to emotional survival much as work with an ax or scythe kept him physically in shape. The poem was a stay against confusion, albeit a momentary one. What counted most was the writing itself, the actual doing of the task whether on paper or in a field cutting hay, for it is in process that we find "man thinking." Frost shares with Emerson th is b e lie f th a t man is most a liv e , most fu lly human, when he continually engages his mind and body in the endless pursuit of meaning. Frost does not share Emerson's love of the common worker, however. The day-laborer does not "see" in Frost, he does not "seek." Without language, he lacks the main tool to do so. Whether lugging rocks or furiously shoveling dirt, Frost's workers are either speechless or frantic talkers and differ most from the poet himself in their inability to articu­ late their distress. Whereas Frost attempts to balance the contradictions of reality through language and hold them at bay, his speechless laborers are overwhelmed by them. Frost's distancing himself from "the people" led to trouble for him with the socially minded critics of the t h i r t i e s . In A Further Range esp ec ially Frost distinguished himself from writers like Carl Sandburg by resisting the v i i corporate movements of h is tim es. But such re sista n c e had its emotional cost. Raised by a mother who Believed that one's highest calling was love for "dear humanity," Frost wrestled with the question of his proper role as poet in an out-of-work and unhappy world. Selfish and yet not wanting to he, he was nagged hy guilt much of his life, a guilt suggested perhaps hy the private and tortured poems in the middle of his seemingly most public book, A Further Range. Frost's favorite tools are ones of solitary work. They are part of the hack country, not of the factory union. His interest as a poet is with the isolated man who works not for society hut for himself, who struggles not with the world at large hut with the voices inside him that will not let him rest. Frost's place in America is thus in the tradition of Hawthorne and Brown, and he i s a " te rrify in g p o et," in Lionel T r illin g 's words, because he forces us to "front" reality, not run from it.

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