A Boys Will (1913) is a collection of poems by American poet Robert Frost. Published in London and dedicated to the poets wife, Elinor, A Boys Will, which received enthusiastic early reviews from both Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats, launched Frosts career as Americas leading poet of the early-twentieth century. Invoking such figures as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, and Thomas Hardy, Frost ties himself to tradition while establishing his own poetic legacy, grounded in an intuitive sense of rural New England life and the subtleties of the soul.
Into My Own, the collections opening poem, reveals the poets strange wish to steal away into those dark trees, / So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze. Without fear, he welcomes uncertainty, ventures into it willingly, knowing it is the only way to live. In Ghost House, the poet enters a realm of shades and spirits, an underworld of memory where a lonely house has left no trace but the cellar walls. As he moves through this twilight landscape, encountering the mute folk
Who share the unlit place with him, the poet meditates on life and death, their proximity and distance, and his own sense of self within both. Mowing envisions the poets work through the prism of rural labor. There was never a sound beside the wood but one / And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. / What was it it whispered? The speaker does not know, but continues his task, hypnotized by its rhythm and music.
With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Robert Frosts A Boys Will is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.
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11 | (1) |
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The youth is persuaded that he will be rather more than less himself for having forsworn the world |
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12 | (1) |
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He is happy in society of his choosing |
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13 | (1) |
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He is in love with being misunderstood |
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14 | (1) |
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He is in doubt whether to admit real trouble to a place beside the hearth with love |
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15 | (1) |
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He courts the autumnal mood |
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16 | (1) |
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There is no oversight of human affairs |
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17 | (1) |
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He is afraid of his own isolation |
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18 | (1) |
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Out of the winter things he fashions a story of modern love |
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To the Thawing Wind (audio) |
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19 | (1) |
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He calls on change through the violence of the elements |
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20 | (1) |
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He discovers that the greatness of love lies not in forward-looking thoughts; |
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21 | (1) |
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Nor yet in any spur it may be to ambition |
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22 | (1) |
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He is no dissenter from the ritualism of nature; |
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23 | (1) |
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Nor from the ritualism of youth which is make-believe |
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24 | (1) |
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He arrives at the turn of the year |
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25 | (1) |
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Out of old longings he fashions a story |
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26 | (1) |
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He is shown by a dream how really well it is with him |
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27 | (1) |
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He is scornful of folk his scorn cannot reach |
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28 | (1) |
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And again scornful, but there is no one hurt |
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29 | (1) |
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He takes up life simply with the small tasks |
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30 | (3) |
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33 | (3) |
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He resolves to become intelligible, at least to himself, since there is no help else; The Trial by Existence and to know definitely what he thinks about the soul; |
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34 | (2) |
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36 | (2) |
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38 | (2) |
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40 | (2) |
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42 | (1) |
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43 | (4) |
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47 | (1) |
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It is time to make an end of speaking |
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48 | (1) |
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It is the autumnal mood with a difference |
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49 | (1) |
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He sees days slipping from him that were the best for what they were |
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50 | (2) |
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There are things that can never be the same |
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Reluctance |
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Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet. Born in San Francisco, Frost moved with his family to Lawrence, Massachusetts following the death of his father, a teacher and editor. There, he attended Lawrence High School and went on to study for a brief time at Dartmouth College before returning home to work as a teacher, factory worker, and newspaper delivery person. Certain of his calling as a poet, Frost sold his first poem in 1894, embarking on a career that would earn him acclaim and honor unlike any American poet before or since. Before his paternal grandfathers death, he purchased a farm in Derry, New Hampshire for Robert and his wife Elinor. For the next decade, Frost worked on the farm while writing poetry in the mornings before returning to teaching once more. In 1912, having moved to England, Frost published A Boys Will, his first book of poems. Through the next several years, he wrote and published poetry while befriending such writers as Edward Thomas and Ezra Pound. In 1915, after publishing North of Boston (1914) in London, Frost returned to the United States to settle on another farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he continued writing and teaching and began lecturing. Over the next several decades, Frost published numerous collections of poems, including New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes (1924) and Collected Poems (1931), winning a total of four Pulitzer Prizes and establishing his reputation as the foremost American poet of his generation.