Entries from Come Sit a While that draw on the words of Robert Frost.
Robert Lee Frost (1874–1963) is the most widely read American poet of the 20th century, famous for poems that seem simple on the surface — snowy evenings, country roads, stone walls — and carry profound weight beneath. But his life was not the pastoral idyll his poems suggest. He lost his father at eleven. His mother struggled with poverty and illness. His son died in infancy, his daughter in childbirth, another daughter spent decades in a mental institution, and his wife Elinor — the love of his life — died of heart disease in 1938, a blow from which Frost said he never recovered. He spent years farming in New Hampshire and teaching in obscurity before his first two collections, published in England in his late thirties, finally brought him the recognition that had eluded him for decades. He went on to win four Pulitzer Prizes — more than any other poet — and read at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961 at the age of eighty-six, the winter sun so bright he could not see his prepared text and recited “The Gift Outright” from memory instead. He knew hardship from the inside. That is why he could write about it so plainly.
Entries featuring Robert Frost
- The Way Out Is Through (2026-03-05)
Drawn from 1 entries · refreshed July 24, 2026