Early Poems: A Boy's Will, North of Boston, Mountain Interval

Summary

This volume joins Robert Frost's first three books of poems, all written about New England farm country and published between 1913 and 1916. A Boy's Will (London, 1913) is a book of short lyrics arranged in three parts, and the library text keeps the original contents page, where each title is followed by an italic gloss in the third person describing what the youth of the book is feeling: in Into My Own he imagines stealing away into dark trees and believes those who follow will find him only more sure of all he thought was true; in Storm Fear he is afraid of his own isolation; in The Tuft of Flowers a mower finds a patch of butterfly weed spared by the man who scythed the field before him and decides that men work together whether they work together or apart; and in Mowing a scythe whispers in the hay while the speaker concludes that fact is the sweetest dream labor knows. Other poems include Ghost House, My November Guest, A Prayer in Spring, Revelation, The Trial by Existence and Reluctance. North of Boston (London, 1914), dedicated to E. M. F. as this book of people, opens with the brief invitation The Pasture and then turns to longer blank-verse narratives and dialogues in the speech of rural New Englanders. In Mending Wall two neighbors rebuild a boundary wall each spring while the speaker questions the neighbor's proverb that good fences make good neighbors. In The Death of the Hired Man, Mary and Warren argue over whether to take back the old laborer Silas, who has come home to die; Warren finds him dead at the end. Home Burial shows a husband and wife divided by grief for their dead child. A Servant to Servants is the monologue of an overworked farm wife who has once been in the State Asylum and whose uncle was kept caged at home. After Apple-picking ends a harvest in drowsy half-dream, and The Wood-pile finds an abandoned cord of wood rotting in a frozen swamp. Mountain Interval (New York, 1916) opens with The Road Not Taken, printed in italics as a prologue, and includes Birches, in which a boy swings birches down to the ground and the aging speaker wishes he could do it again, The Oven Bird, An Old Man's Winter Night, A Time to Talk, The Hill Wife sequence, and Out, Out, in which a farm boy loses his hand to a buzz-saw and dies under ether. Frost wrote most of these poems while farming at Derry, New Hampshire, and published the first two books with David Nutt in London during his family's stay in England from 1912 to 1915; Henry Holt brought out American editions and published Mountain Interval.

Top Lessons

• Work as a way of knowing

  In Mowing, The Tuft of Flowers and After Apple-picking, ordinary farm labor becomes a way to think about truth, fellowship and death. Frost refuses fairy gold and easy dreams in Mowing and insists that the fact itself is sweet. Students can watch how close attention to a task opens onto large questions.

• Neighbors and boundaries

  Mending Wall shows two men working side by side to rebuild what nature keeps knocking down. The speaker doubts the need for the wall but still meets his neighbor every spring to mend it, and the neighbor's proverb gets the last word. The poem leaves the reader to weigh custom against curiosity rather than deciding for us.

• What home means

  In The Death of the Hired Man, Warren defines home as the place that has to take you in, while Mary calls it something you somehow haven't to deserve. Silas comes back not to his brother's house but to the farm where he worked, hoping to be useful. The poem asks what we owe to those who have no claim on us but need.

• Choices remembered

  The Road Not Taken describes two roads worn really about the same, yet foresees that the traveler will one day claim that his choice made all the difference. The poem is often read as a call to nonconformity, but its details suggest a gentler irony about how people tell the stories of their lives.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Frost's rural poems contain some of the clearest pictures of medicine and mental illness on early twentieth-century New England farms. A Servant to Servants is a monologue by a farm wife who has been in the State Asylum, whose doctor (named Lowe) says she needs rest rather than medicine, and who describes an uncle who went mad young and was kept in a cage of hickory poles at home; she compares the old practice of keeping the insane at home or in the poorhouse with the state hospital, which she now thinks the better asylum. The poem is a period document of the move from domestic confinement to state institutions and of the rest cure for exhausted women; any modern diagnosis of her condition is a reading, not a fact. Out, Out describes a buzz-saw amputation, the doctor's ether anesthesia and death, apparently from shock, in a few lines; the poem's title echoes Macbeth. Home Burial portrays divergent grief after a child's death, a wife who cannot bear her husband's apparent calm and a husband who cannot understand her. The Death of the Hired Man shows an old laborer returning to die, and An Old Man's Winter Night pictures solitary old age.

• North of Boston, A Servant to Servants

  The farm wife describes her exhaustion, her doctor's prescription of rest, her stay in the State Asylum, and her family's earlier practice of keeping a mad uncle caged in the house.

• Mountain Interval, "Out, Out--"

  A boy's hand is cut by the buzz-saw; he begs that the doctor not amputate, is put under ether, and his pulse fades while watchers listen at his heart.

• North of Boston, Home Burial

  A mother's grief for her firstborn turns against her husband, who dug the grave himself; the poem stages two incompatible ways of mourning.

• North of Boston, The Death of the Hired Man

  Mary notices how changed and worn the old hired man Silas is; Warren later finds him dead.