Essay on Symbols and Symbolism in the Poems of Robert Frost

     Frost?s poem delves deeper into the being and essence of life with his second set of lines. The first line states, ?Her early leaf?s a flower.? After the budding and sprouting, which is the birth of nature, is growth into a flower. This is the moment where noon turns to evening, where childhood turns into maturity, and where spring turns into summer. At this very moment is the ripe and prime age of things. The young flower stands straight up and basks in the sun, the now mature teenager runs playfully in the light, and the day and sunlight peak before descending ever so quickly into dusk. The second line of the second set states, ?But only so an hour,? which makes clear that yet again time is passing by and that a beginning will inevitably have an end.

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” - John Muir. Nature is unpredictable and you never know what you’ll see when you are exploring it. Robert Frost used nature as something to help him describe his feelings in his poems, and showed how much nature can affect someone. Creative writers when surrounded by nature can make something worth reading about it. Frost just so happened to be one of those creative writers and that made him a great success.

The world has several great poets and many mind-blowing works, each with its own way of portraying its own message and some the same ones. Jane Flanders wrote the poem named “Cloud Painter” she shows the world from an artistic way, using a painter and his canvas to help the reader picture the true meaning behind the words and images created. Robert Frost takes on the same idea but uses a less complex example so that it makes his work easy to understand while not revealing the real meaning of the poem. Frost and Flanders are just two of the many poets that use nature as a way of explaining the very lessons in life. Each poet has a different way of presenting similar images but from a different perspective.

Frost was an intelligent man. He faced many hardships throughout his life and poetry is one of the few things that helped him get through the rough times. Alongside his wife, Elinor, they lost most of their children and struggled to find poets who would take a chance on new poets such as Frost. Even when faced with many tough choices in life, Elinor’s complete support through Frost’s journey on becoming a poet helped light some inspiration to frost as well as helped with helping him continue his journey. After a few years, one of the first poets to believe and take a look a Frost’s work were authors Pound and Thomas. Through this, Frost became acquaintances with Pound and very good friends with Thomas. Through the meaningful relationships formed

The world has several great poets and numerous mind-blowing works, each with its own way of portraying its own message using symbolism to represent lessons of everyday life. Jane Flanders wrote the poem named “Cloud Painter” she shows the world from an artistic way, using a painter and his canvas to help the reader picture the true meaning behind the words and images created. Robert Frost takes on the same idea, but uses a less complex example so that it makes his work easy to understand while not revealing the actual meaning of the poem. Frost and Flanders are just two of the many poets that use nature as a way of explaining the very lessons in life. Each poet has a different way of presenting similar images but from a different perspective. Poems are short stories that have a meaning behind them without revealing them in obvious ways. Although some are confusing and may use a different style there are a few that present the same message even if they are written by a different poet. “Cloud Painter” written by Jane Flanders uses the clouds and other subjects of nature. Such as trees and the hills. to help the reader picture the true meaning behind her poem. Robert Frost's poem by the name of “Nothing Gold Can Stay” also takes the nature route to convey the point of his poems words and their Each has a unique way of creating an idea that most can relate to emotionally and physically.

In this poem the first literary element that Frost uses is imagery. The use of imagery gives his readers a deep

Nature has an undefinable meaning as the theme is utilised in literature, and it has been a topic of reflection within the Romanticists since the beginning of the era. Romanticism and nature and inextricably linked ideas. Poets; Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman wrote during the romantic era, and both drew heavily from aspects of nature in their work. Nature can be paralleled against several things, including humanity and the idea of life and death. The contrast between the natural world and the artificial world, and what this means for society, is also strongly eluded to in Dickinson and Whitman’s poems. Each poet uses nature as the backbone to their poetry in several instances. Dickinson’s, “Hope is the Thing with Feathers”, (Dickinson, 19) and “My Life Has Stood A Loaded Gun”, (Dickinson, 69) are strong examples of this. Whitman’s, “Song of Myself”, (Whitman, 29) and, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, (Whitman, 255) are also poems that show the connection between nature and romanticism. Poets, Dickinson and Whitman engage with romanticism in a creative and constructive manner through the utilisation of the natural world.

Robert Frost spent much of his life studying the existence of everything around him. He studied the everyday ins and outs of other people and nature, and very often contemplated the point of human life and religion. Many of these topics,

Frost also uses the form of the poem to establish himself as a nature poet. He encloses the subject of nature inside the traditional sonnet form, connecting himself to one of the foremost nature poets, Wordsworth. While he uses the same form and subject as Wordsworth, he creates his own rhyme scheme, breaking from the Petrarchan form used by Wordsworth and showing that the material inside the casing of this sonnet is not a traditional nature poem.

Robert Frost's poem Design seemingly disputes the question whether there is a design to life; yet, he is not able to establish an answer. Despite the comlexity of his poem his implied message is rather simple. Frost's statement clarified human's eagerness to finding a meaning to life and an essential background and reason to events, regardless of how small and insignificant they might be. His work states an advice not to interpret too much into insignificant conincidences or apportion them too much relevance.

Poetry is a literary medium which often resonates with the responder on a personal level, through the subject matter of the poem, and the techniques used to portray this. Robert Frost utilises many techniques to convey his respect for nature, which consequently makes much of his poetry relevant to the everyday person. The poems “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ and “The mending wall” strongly illuminate Frost’s reverence to nature and deal with such matter that allows Frost to speak to ordinary people.

Robert Lee Frost, born in 1874, grew up in California. He was an extraordinary student, and ended his high school career as one of the valedictorians. He was very intelligent, and even went on to Dartmouth College, though he did not graduate. He was married to his former high school classmate Elinor White in 1895. Together they gave birth to six children. Later in life he attended Harvard College. Robert Frost was known for his love of nature, and portrays it in many of his poems. For part of his life he worked as a farmer, which could have contributed to his love for nature. Though Frost clearly states, “I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems” (frostfriends.org). Frost obviously does not want people to think that he writes strictly about nature. He wants others to see the meaning behind his poetry, as well as the “human psychology” hidden underneath his poems. Frost did love nature though, not to be mistaken. He did use nature a lot throughout his poetry, he just did not want people to skim the surface of his poems and think they were about nature when they

Robert Frost said many times throughout his life that all men share a common bond. In his poem “The Tuft of Flowers” he analyzes the potential of such a bond, in first person. Frost turns an everyday common job, into discovering a common bond with another laborer. The author uses a comparison between aloneness with a sense of understanding to demonstrate his theme of unity between two men. In another one of Frost’s poems “Birches” he imagines walking through the woods looking at all the trees, and seeing the top bending towards the ground. When he sees this he imagines they are bending from kids swinging on them, rather then what is really happening to them. It can be analyzed that Frost had a very definitive appreciation for nature, and a very broad imagination.

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” Robert Frost once said. As is made fairly obvious by this quote, Frost was an adroit thinker. It seems like he spent much of his life thinking about the little things. He often pondered the meaning and symbolism of things he found in nature. Many readers find Robert Frost’s poems to be straightforward, yet his work contains deeper layers of complexity beneath the surface. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “ The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.

Robert Frost’s nature poetry occupies a significant place in the poetic arts; however, it is likely Frost’s use of nature is the most misunderstood aspect of his poetry. While nature is always present in Frost’s writing, it is primarily used in a “pastoral sense” (Lynen 1). This makes sense as Frost did consider himself to be a shepherd.