2130_american lit module 2_ robert frost

Robert Frost

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company

Robert Frost


“The Gift Outright”


• “Home Burial”– “ ‘Where do you mean to go? First tell me that. /

I’ll follow and bring you back by force. I will!—’ ”

• “After Apple-Picking”– “One can see what will trouble / This sleep of

mine, whatever sleep it is.”

• “‘Out, Out—’”– “They listened at his heart. / Little—less—nothing!

—and that ended it.”

Human Mortality


• “Desert Places” “And lonely as it is, that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less— A blanker whiteness of benighted snow With no expression, nothing to express.”

• “Design” “What but design of darkness to appall?— If design govern in a thing so small.”

The Absence of God


• “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep.And miles to go before I sleep.”

Human Powerlessness


• “The Road Not Taken”“I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.”

Human Powerlessness


“There is a singer everyone has heard,Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

. . . . . . . .The bird would cease and be as other birdsBut that he knows in singing not to sing.The question that he frames in all but wordsIs what to make of a diminished thing.”

“The Oven Bird”


“The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct youWho only has at heart your getting lost,May seem as if it should have been a quarry—Great monolithic knees the former townLong since gave up pretense of keeping covered

. . . . . . . .Here are your waters and your watering place.Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.”

“Directive”


“Birches”


“When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees,I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

. . . . . . . .One could do worse than be a swinger of

birches.”

“Birches”

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Robert Frost

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2130_american lit module 2_ robert frost

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