“God’s Own Descent”: Dante, the Incarnation, & Frost’s “The Trial by Existence”

By |2024-02-06T19:56:27-06:00February 6th, 2024|Categories: Dante, Literature, Poetry, Robert Frost|

“The Trial by Existence” is an example of Robert Frost’s strong and brilliant reworking of Dante’s poetic tradition in his own work. He incorporates many of Dante’s images, but he also pushes past the ending silence of "Paradiso" by making the incarnate Christ the sight at the top of the mountain. But God's own descent [...]

“The Road Not Taken”

By |2023-07-22T08:50:33-05:00July 21st, 2023|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy [...]

Beyond the Lines: Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

By |2023-01-28T16:43:06-06:00January 28th, 2023|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost, Timeless Essays|

A century after its composition, Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” continues to leave readers, academics, poetry lovers, and poets alike pondering its meaning. Undoubtedly, the poem has a magical quality: its images are simple, yet elusive; the scene of dark woods, snow-blanketed trails, and a single farmhouse are painted with clarity, [...]

Robert Frost: Imaginative Conservative

By |2022-01-28T19:44:21-06:00January 28th, 2022|Categories: Conservatism, Featured, Peter Stanlis, Poetry, Robert Frost, Timeless Essays|

Robert Frost seemed stubbornly—even querulously—conservative, but it is often the case that he dramatizes political realities most shrewdly and profoundly in poems that never mention politics in the conventional sense. Shortly before the death of Robert Frost, the editor of a selection of critical essays on the poet summarized the case for his prosecution as [...]

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

By |2024-01-15T11:23:53-06:00December 1st, 2020|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. [...]

“Nothing Gold Can Stay”

By |2020-11-21T11:31:02-06:00November 21st, 2020|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|

Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. […]

Behind the Lines: Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice”

By |2020-11-11T16:11:09-06:00November 11th, 2020|Categories: Literature, Poetry, Robert Frost|

For all the poem’s structural simplicity, Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” perfectly encapsulates the poetic concept of complex metaphor. The metaphor, in which the universe mirrors the human soul, has two contrasting components: fire and ice, the personal and the cosmic, the real and the theoretical, desire and hate. Anyone who has ever attended a [...]

“Fire and Ice”

By |2020-09-06T11:43:47-05:00September 6th, 2020|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. The Imaginative Conservative applies the [...]

Robert Frost: The Conversationalist as Poet

By |2021-01-28T22:40:32-06:00January 28th, 2020|Categories: Language, Literature, Peter Stanlis, Poetry, Robert Frost|

Robert Frost’s theory goes to the heart of his entire aesthetic philosophy and conception of art, and is ultimately a vital part of his great skill and power both as a conversationalist and poet, and in his metaphorical habits of thought as a philosophical dualist: “I was poetry that talked.” From around 1913 until Robert [...]

“The Door in the Dark”

By |2020-10-20T16:31:44-05:00November 25th, 2018|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|

In going from room to room in the dark, I reached out blindly to save my face, But neglected, however lightly, to lace My fingers and close my arms in an arc. A slim door got in past my guard, And hit me a blow in the head so hard I had my native simile [...]

“In a Disused Graveyard”

By |2020-10-21T06:34:08-05:00October 28th, 2018|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|

The living come with grassy tread To read the gravestones on the hill; The graveyard draws the living still, But never anymore the dead. The verses in it say and say: "The ones who living come today To read the stones and go away Tomorrow dead will come to stay." So sure of death the [...]

Mending Walls: Why Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

By |2020-03-25T12:37:16-05:00July 8th, 2018|Categories: Civil Society, Community, Immigration, John Horvat, Robert Frost, St. Thomas Aquinas|

The liberal rage against the border wall has much to do with the nature of boundaries. Walls, borders, and fences are manifestations of restraint. Fallen humanity naturally resists the restraints of order that keep the unbridled passions under control. Walls are needed to keep the peace… “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote [...]

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