Meet Mr. Frost

Robert Frost, ~1913

The English poet, novelist, and translator Robert Graves has said that "Robert Frost was the first American who could be honestly reckoned a master-poet by world standards" (Frost).  Irony abounds in this statement, for, though he would become a household name in his own lifetime, Frost found no success as a poet until he left his native America for England, and despite his success found little favor with his American contemporaries who found Frost's classical, pastoral works to be backwards-facing compared to their free-form and political writings (Baym 776).

The Frost family

Frost was born in San Francisco, but when his father died (Frost aged 11) his mother moved the family back East to the family's traditional Massachusetts home.  It was the rural scenes of his adolescence that would become Frost's medium for the duration of his career.  Frost was first published by his high school's magazine, and though he pursued several professions after a two-month stint at Dartmouth, he always felt that his calling was poetry ("Robert Frost").  After working as a teacher and dairy farmer, among other things, Frost moved his family to England in 1912.  He continued to work on his poetry, and in 1914 his first book of poems, A Boy's Will, was published.  Ezra Pound took an interest in his work, and upon his recommendation, Frost's second book, North of Boston, was published in America.  At last vindicated--or redeemed--Frost returned to America upon his new-found success, buying a farm in Derry, New Hampshire (Baym 775).

Frost at his Derry, New Hampshire farm.

Frost's work is artfully deceptive.  It is tempting to read his poems as simple descriptions of pretty things in nature, or interesting narratives of country folk, but his work contains what Frost called "ulteriority"--layered beneath every line are ulterior meanings to be found by the contemplative reader.  This is the delight of reading Frost: No bashing over the reader's head with blunt language, rather, depth in beauty to be found when looked for, pleasantly.

Frost at Kennedy's inauguration

Robert Frost died in 1963 aged 89, thus eulogized by President Kennedy: "His death impoverishes us all; but he has bequeathed this nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding" (Frost).

"To a Young Wretch"

To a Young Wretch

Spruce forest

As gay for you to take your father's ax
As take his gun—rod—to go hunting—fishing.
You nick my spruce until its fiber cracks,
It gives up standing straight and goes down swishing.
You link an arm in its arm and you lean
Across the light snow homeward smelling green.
I could have bought you just as good a tree
To frizzle resin in a candle flame,
And what a saving 'twould have meant to me.
But tree by charity is not the same
As tree by enterprise and expedition.
I must not spoil your Christmas with contrition.

It is your Christmases against my woods.
But even where thus opposing interests kill,
They are to be thought of as opposing goods
Oftener than as conflicting good and ill;
Which makes the war god seem no special dunce
For always fighting on both sides at once.

And though in tinsel chain and popcorn rope,
My tree a captive in your window bay
Has lost its footing on my mountain slope
And lost the stars of heaven, may, oh, may
The symbol star it lifts against your ceiling
Help me accept its fate with Christmas feeling (Frost 349).

Analysis of "To a Young Wretch"

Where to start! Even the most mundane-seeming poem from Frost comes round to nip the backside if you give it enough looking, and here I am, up to my neck in layers of meaning.

Well, it's perfectly morbid when you put it that way

“To a Young Wretch” is the nineteenth poem in A Witness Tree, smack in the middle, and not very remarkable in Frost's body of work; in fact, I very nearly found no commentary on it. Published in 1942, it was not what I was looking for. Indeed, I bought Edward Latham’s collection of Frost’s poetry looking for later works, but "Young Wretch" caught my eye due to its timeliness; a poem about Christmas trees right here at Christmas, how cute, really!  I am that whimsical, and for about a day that's just what it was: A poem about Christmas trees.  But, I began to put my eye to it, I knew by virtue of its authorship that there was something down there, down in it; something not about Christmas trees.

The most important thing in interpreting poetry is to determine the speaker.  The speaker is the lens through which the poem is viewed; the voice that gives its tone.  The speaker interprets the poem before the reader, as such, without identifying the speaker, the reader will not understand the poem.  Finding the speaker was the beginning of getting past Christmas trees, and he is found toward the very end: "My tree a captive in your window bay / has lost its footing on my mountain slope," the speaker laments (Frost 350).  The few commentaries I found identify this as a man, a property owner.  Ownership and property is a recurring theme in A Witness Tree, occurring in "Our Hold on the Planet" (which Frost read at Kennedy's inauguration), "Trespass," "A Serious Step Lightly Taken" and others, so I cannot fault anyone else for thinking the speaker a property owner, a jealous hermit who guards his trees, but I don't think it so.  This time, the land is the speaker, and where my speaker differs, so follows my understanding of the poem.


The young wretch of titular fame is certainly a trespasser; he is an invader, and a huntsman.  He wields an axe, but not as a tool and not for survival, rather, he wields it "as gay" as he takes his father's gun or fishing rod to go out for sport (Frost 349).  This is the beginning of the conflict that drives the land's narrative.  The wretch takes a spruce, and the land puts forth "I could have bought you just as good a tree to frizzle resin in a candle flame," knowing that the tree is to be wasted in petty entertainment.  The spruce is precious to the land, it has grown there just so, it is part of its character, and for the wretch's purposes, any pre-cut tree waiting in a lot will do.  But that can't be it, the land concedes, this spruce is also precious to the wretch: It is the spruce that he has chosen for his purpose.  There is an interesting internal conflict for the speaker, now--this is the difference between a man speaker and a land speaker--the land is not a jealous guardian, it is a forlorn witness, struggling to balance interests.

Those with an eye for theology will smirk with the speaker's relent that "I must not spoil your Christmas with contrition," contrition being sorrow or repugnance toward sin.  There is perfect contrition, which arises from a love of God, and imperfect contrition, which stems from fear of consequence ("Contrition").  So wry, the speaker, to dissociate contrition from Christmas.   Entering its second stanza, "Young Wretch" continues its turn toward the cosmic.  Religious peoples have always invoked their gods in battle, and here the stage is set: "It is your Christmases against my woods," but ever contemplative, the land recognizes, "But even where thus opposing interests kill, / They are to be thought of as opposing goods / Oftener than as conflicting good and ill" (Frost 350)  Here is the turning point for the speaker, his recognition that conflicting interests can be more than propagandized good and evil.  This is a big deal in a me-you, us-them world.  What a pointed observation in the context of 1942 as Europe was embroiled in wars of ideologies, as despots preached the superiority of one nationality over another.
The last half of the second stanza throws a wrench in things: "Oftener than as conflicting good and ill; / Which makes the war god seem no special dunce / For always fighting on both sides at once."  Does the speaker mean to say that the war god is a dunce for pitting good against good?  Or is it that he is clever, patronizing more than one force, thereby ensuring the victory of good regardless of the outcome of the battle?  This is one to mull over--could it be, even, that the speaker has crafted his phrase to mean both?

In closing out the conflict, the speaker turns to more irony, turning our notion of the decorations of a Christmas tree on their heads, pointing out that to the tree, they are implements of bondage: "And though in tinsel chain and popcorn rope / My tree a captive in your window bay" which hold the spruce captive away from its native "footing on my mountain slope."  But the land is hopeful, and is coming to peace with the outcome of good competing with good.  Though it has lost its precious spruce, good has come from it, and there has been gain.

1937 Frost Christmas Card

This unassuming poem about Christmas trees has delivered its ulterior message, a tale of gain and goodness even in loss.  Maybe so soon after his wife's death that is what Frost needed, gain in loss, or what Frost thought we need as a people.  "To a Young Wretch" was the second Frost poem to be used as a Christmas card.  At first glance, it seems a very odd choice, but with a deep look into the message, its appropriateness shines through.

The Outsiders and "Nothing Gold Can Stay"

This week I went on a Ralph Macchio bender (keep your opinions to yourselves, thank you), so this afternoon I was watching The Outsiders, and whadda ya know, one of the main characters starts reciting Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay." I'm not analyzing that poem, but it was a nice coincidence. Here's the scene:


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.

"Nothing Gold Can Stay" is definitely one of Frosts poems containing what Frost called "ulteriority"--there is a plain meaning, and a meaning below that, layered into the poem.

Ironically, for most readers the ulterior message in this poem is it's message about youth, but the characters in The Outsiders, surrounded by grit, poverty, domestic violence, and street gangs are familiar with the ulterior meaning. To these downtrodden urban youths, the poem's pastoral imagery is the elusive component. To them, it is nature that is elusive, and not the quick fading of youth that has already jaded them in their adolescence.



To Johnny, the impact of Frost's word is deep, and as he lays dying (from burns), he imparts them to Ponyboy as his last words.