Thoughts About Frost

J.D. McClatchy believes that Frost's poetry indicate that the poet was a "Puritan without a God."

J. D McClatchy identifies Frost as a Puritan without God. 

Frost defined “a Puritan as one who was willing to put moral bounds on what he wanted, including not only pleasures of the senses, such as “wine, women, and song,” but also things as political power. (frostfriends.org)

In “Desert Places” Frost wrote, “They cannot scare me with their empty spaces / Between stars- on stars where no human race is. / I have it in me so much nearer home / To scare myself with my own desert places.”

 Recognizing Frost’s Puritan ancestry, readers can feel that the poet is anxious about what would happened after death. 

According to Peter Stanlis, the poet believed that “because of the uncertainty of God’s ultimate justice or mercy, man is compelled to “stay afraid” deep in his soul.” (eclectic.org)

In “Design” Frost depicts a white spider preying a moth. Many readers use this image as a metaphor for “the world made in God’s image and the evil seems to have infiltrated it.”

 

In “Once by the Pacific” Frost says “Someone had better be prepared for rage. / There would be more than ocean-water broken / Before God’s last Put out the light was spoken.” 

In these two poems, readers can see that Frost was pondering about the question of God and the afterlife.

Frost told his friend G. R. Elliott in 1947: “My fear of God has settled down into a deep and inward fear that my best offering may not prove acceptable in his sight.”

In a 1932 letter to poet Louis Untermeyer, Frost specified that the God he feared was the “God of Israel, who admits he is a jealous god.”

In his lectures and letters, Frost often alluded to his fear: "My fear of God has settled down into a deep and inward fear that my best offering may not prove acceptable in his sight," he told his friend G. R. Elliott in 1947.

In Frost's interview in the Paris Review, he says, "I never knew how many disadvantages anyone needed to get anywhere in the world." 

Frost is suggesting that travelling can make people feel exposed. In his poem, “The Exposed Nest,” he tells his readers the danger to be away from your roots and to be exposed to other people and ideas without knowing how to protect yourself or protect your family. 

But Frost trip to England brought many advantages in his life. It is in England that he proved himself as a poet. He wrote “Mending Fences” when he came back from a trip to Scotland and he wrote “The Road Not Taken” to illustrate Edward Thomas’s indecisiveness while they were walking in the wood in England. Therefore, Frost’s trip to England brought many advantages to the poet.

Indeed, Robert Frost had many fears and he tries to fight against many of them in his poems.