A Study of Robert Frost’s Poetry
Groups:
“THE ROAD NOT TAKEN”(4 students):_______________________________________________________
“NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY” (4 students):___________________________________________________
“STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING” (6 Students):____________________________
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“FIRE AND ICE”(4 students):_________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________
“BIRCHES” (6 Students): ____________________________________________________________________
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In your group, read and explore the attached Frost poems and complete the following (due Friday,
March 11, 2005):
I.
Answer the study guide questions.
II.
Identify the delight, the wisdom, the denouement, and the surprise of remembering as
Frost has described in the following comments he made about poetry:
 “It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”
 “It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid
down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life—not necessarily
a great clarification . . .”
 “It has a denouement.”
 “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for
the reader. For me the initial delight is the surprise of remembering something I didn’t
know I knew.”
III.
Discuss the use of literary or poetic devices. (Examples: alliteration, assonance, blank verse,
cliché, conflict, consonance, couplet, denouement, dialect, dramatic monologue, elegy, free
verse, internal rhyme, irony, lyric poem, metaphor, meter, onomatopoeia, oxymoron,
personification, refrain, rhyme, rhythm, symbolism. If you don’t know what these terms
mean, you better; I suggest you look them up.)
IV.
We will read these poems and discuss them on Friday (March 11, 2005). I expect to hear
well-rehearsed and creatively presented poems. Make Robert Frost proud!
“THE ROAD NOT TAKEN”
1. Describe both of the roads that the author finds.
2. Which road does the speaker choose?
3. Which road would you choose? Why?
4. Does the speaker seem happy about his decision?
5. Why does the choice of roads in "The Road Not Taken" make so much difference to the speaker years
later? What might the two roads represent?
6. How do you view choices in your life? Are you excited about different opportunities or confused when
another choice comes your way?
“NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY”
1. What happens to each of the elements mentioned in the poem?
2. What is the meaning of the first line?
3. What is the poem’s theme, or main point?
4. How does the allusion, or reference, to Eden help convey the theme?
5. How many "gold" things are suggested in "Nothing Gold Can Stay"? How does grief in Eden relate to the
passing of seasons?
6. Do you agree with the outlook expressed in this poem? Why or why not?
“STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING”
1. Why does the speaker stop in the woods? What is his attitude?
2. What does the speaker imagine that his horse “must think”?
3. Why does the horse give “his harness bells a shake”?
4. What do the speaker’s actions in this poem reveal about his personality?
5. What internal conflict does the speaker experience?
6. How is the conflict resolved? What happens at the end of the poem?
7. What difference between humans and animals is revealed through the horse’s behavior?
8. How does the repetition of the “d” sound in the line “The woods are lovely, dark and deep” reinforce the
meaning of the line?
9. What is the effect of Frost’s use of repetition in the final two lines?
10. A temporary escape from reality is revealed in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Why do you
think that people at times need to find this type of temporary escape?
11. Do you view the ending in a positive or a negative light? Why?
12. Comment on the setting. Why do you think the author used a winter scene?
13. What might the woods and snow and dark symbolize?
“FIRE AND ICE”
1. In what two ways do “some say” the world will end?
2. With whom does the speaker “hold”?
3. What does the speaker feel would also suffice “for destruction”?
4. In this poem the speaker approaches a very serious subject in a seemingly casual manner. What might have
been Frost’s reasons for taking this type of approach?
5. What emotion does each of the natural elements in the poem represent?
6. What does the speaker suggest that these emotions have in common?
7. Why does the speaker in "Fire and Ice" prefer for the world to end in fire? What kind of tone do you hear in
the language, rhythm, and rhyme of this poem?
8. What emotions, aside from the ones referred to in the poem, do you think bring out destructive impulses in
people?
“BIRCHES”
1. What does the speaker like to think when he sees birches “bend to the left and right”?
2. What causes the birch trees to bend “down to stay”?
3. What is the only play for some boy who lives “too far from town to learn baseball”?
4. How does the boy take the stiffness out of the birch trees?
5. About what does the speaker dream of “going back to be” a “swinger of birches”?
6. How would you characterize the boy described in the poem?
7. Who do you think the boy actually represents?
8. How would you describe the boy’s relationship with nature?
9. What type of condition is the speaker describing in the five lines that begin with “And life is too much like a
pathless wood”?
10. What does the speaker mean when he comments that he hopes that fate will not “half grant” what he wishes?
12. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of growing up “too far from town to learn baseball”?
13. Why does the speaker in "Birches" prefer to see branches bent by boys rather than by ice? Compare the ice
images in this poem and other poems.
14. A symbol is a person, place, object, or action that has a meaning in itself and also represents something larger
than itself. For example, in “Birches” the activity of swinging on birch trees symbolizes both a unity between
humanity and nature and the notion of a temporary escape from reality. Explain the following line: “One
could do worse than be a winger of birches.”
15. What details in the poem suggest that the swinging on birches symbolizes the unity between humanity and
nature?
16. What details suggest that the activity symbolizes a temporary escape from reality?
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
1. What are the views of ordinary people in Frost's poems? How does he capture the rhythms of ordinary
speech through traditional verse forms?
2. What attitudes toward the passage of time are expressed in Frost's poems?
3. What American ideals are examined in the poems of Frost?
4. What are the relationships between humanity and nature explored in Frost's poems?
5. Examine carefully the ways in which many of Frost's poems move from a concrete image or experience
to an exploration of transcendent meanings.
Sources:
The American Experience, Prentice Hall Literature
http://www.ferrum.edu/thanlon/StudyQ/
http://www.viterbo.edu/academic/ug/education/edu250/hllaurent.htm