Robert Frost

Biography

Robert Frost (1874–1963) was one of the leading American poets of the twentieth century and a frequent contributor to VQR. The author of more than twenty books of poetry, he won the Pulitzer Prize four times, for New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes (1924), Collected Poems (1931), A Further Range (1937), and A Witness Tree (1943). He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his work and read “The Gift Outright,” first published in VQR, at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.

See Work

POETRY / Autumn 1928

Acquainted With the Night

By Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

POETRY / Spring 1942

The Gift Outright

By Robert Frost

The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours

POETRY / Winter 1946

Directive

By Robert Frost

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off

POETRY / Spring 1936

Iris by Night

By Robert Frost

One misty evening, one another’s guide,
We two were groping down a Malvern side
The last wet fields and dripping hedges home.

POETRY / Winter 1946

The Middleness of the Road

By Robert Frost

The road at the top of the rise
Seems to come to an end
And take off into the skies.

POETRY / Spring 1936

The Figure in the Doorway

By Robert Frost

The grade surmounted we were speeding high
Through level mountains nothing to the eye
But scrub oak, scrub oak and the lack of earth

POETRY / Winter 1946

Astrometaphysical

By Robert Frost

Lord, I have loved your sky,
Be it said against or for me,
Have loved it clear and high

POETRY / Spring 1936

In Time of Cloudburst

By Robert Frost

Let the downpour roil and toil!
The worst it can do to me
Is carry some garden soil

POETRY / Spring 1942

Time Out

By Robert Frost

It took that pause to make him realize
The mountain he was climbing had the slant
As of a book held up before his eyes

POETRY / Spring 1942

To a Moth Seen in Winter

By Robert Frost

There’s first a gloveless hand warm from my pocket,
A perch and resting place ‘twixt wood and wood,
Bright-black-eyed silvery creature, brushed with brown