| Good morning, Examiner. Today we will be reading about Robert Frost: famed adventurer, peacekeeper and poet. |
| Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874 and spent much of his life on a farm in New Hampshire. He married the love of his life, Elinor in 1894, and had six children with her. Despite the ideal-sounding quality of this description, Frost’s life was plagued with sorrow. He lost his father when he was 11, his mother a few years later, and his sister, whom he had to commit to a mental hospital, died a few years later. He lost his wife in 1938, and of his six children, only 2 lived longer than him when he died in 1963. If anyone had the right to give up on life, it was him. But he did not. He wrote day in and day out, furiously forcing a flurry of words to paper. He helped his friends make difficult decisions regarding war and life, he hunted, he climbed mountains, he raised his remaining children with love and patience, he even travelled as a delegate to the Soviet Union to try to talk to Khrushchev about peace relations between America and Russia. He did all this while battling a lifetime of depression. Frost found the strength to carry on that many do not. Where he found it I cannot say, all I know is that it comes to us from many places… From art, from music, from religion, from friendship, from sucking the marrow out of life… He found power and solace in these things, and in return gave us some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. Read it, dear examiner, with his life in mind: |
| MISGIVING All crying, ‘We will go with you, O Wind!’ The foliage follow him, leaf and stem; But a sleep oppresses them as they go, And they end by bidding them as they go, And they end by bidding him stay with them. Since ever they flung abroad in spring The leaves had promised themselves this flight, Who now would fain seek sheltering wall, Or thicket, or hollow place for the night. And now they answer his summoning blast With an ever vaguer and vaguer stir, Or at utmost a little reluctant whirl That drops them no further than where they were. I only hope that when I am free As they are free to go in quest Of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life It may not seem better to me to rest. |
| In short, his poem is about leaves blowing in a fall wind. They proclaim energetically that they will follow the Wind, but as soon as they are free to fly from their branch, a great tiredness overcomes them, and they succumb, looking for a place to rest despite promising the wind for months that they would fly with him. Now each blast the wind gives to the leaves, the less they respond to it, hardly stirring… eventually lying down forever, not moving at all. Frost then reflects on his own life, hoping that when given the opportunity like the leaves, he will not succumb to exhaustion, rather he will partake in adventure to the fullest degree possible. As for the Scribe… I only hope that when I am free, it may not seem better to me to rest. As spring stretches out its rested wings and flutters towards our doorstep, let us cherish these words. Rest not, Examiner. Suck the marrow out of life. |
| Yours Truly, The Golden Scribe “The unexamined life is not worth living.” -Socrates |