Imagine standing in a lush, green meadow. A slight gust of wind disturbs the rest of a few birds in the rustling birch trees. In the distance, the sound of a horse's harness bells can be heard on its travels into town, yet it cannot be seen. The old country road is separated from the meadow by a handmade stonewall. To the right is an apple orchard. The apples smell so grand that one's mouth begins to water. Then as though the days of youth had pushed you over, you lie in the meadow and stare at the fluffy clouds dancing in the blue sky. This wonderful picture is often the setting of Robert Frost's poetry. These details help to set the idealistic moods of his poems such as in "The Road Not Taken-, "Mending Wall-, and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening-. Frost often intertwines human tragedies, fears, complexities, and the acceptance of burdens within the beautiful setting to create a figurative and symbolic story.
Woods are one of the more common settings of Frost's poetry. As in .
-The Road Not Taken-, He uses woods to represent a moral or mental crossroad. .
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 .
Frost takes the road less traveled, the one that leads deeper into the woods. These lonely, dark woods represent isolation from what is common. In the end he believes that he has chosen the right path, because it has changed his life for the better and there is no need for him to return to this crossroad (Ogilvie 117).
"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know/ What I was walling in or out,/ And to whom I was like to give offense."" One of Frost's most read poems, "Mending Wall- provides comedy as well as reality. Neighbors meet at spring mending time, to repair a stonewall that divides their property. One of the two is very traditional; he follows the cliché of mending this wall, the other can find no reason and continually insists that there is no need for such a wall.