RobertFrost1.docx

1、RobertFrost1Lecture Robert Frost1. Background questions:1) What are the favorite subjects and settings in Robert Frosts poems?2) What are the linguistic features of Robert Frosts poems?3) How does Robert Frost differ from his contemporary poets in form?2. Selected ReadingsPre-reading questions:1) Wh

2、at symbolic meanings does a wall have in your opinion?2) In the very beginning, the poet says something doesnt like a wall. What could the Something be in the poem? Why does not it like the wall?Text A MENDING WALLSomething there is that doesnt love a wall,That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it

3、,And spills the upper boulders in the sun;And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.The work of hunters is another thing:I have come after them and made repairWhere they have left not one stone on a stone,But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,No one

4、has seen them made or heard them made,But at spring mending-time we find them there.I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;And on a day we meet to walk the lineAnd set the wall between us once again.We keep the wall between us as we go.To each the boulders that have fallen to each.And some are loav

5、es and some so nearly ballsWe have to use a spell to make them balance:“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”We wear our fingers rough with handling them.Oh, just another kind of out-door game,One on a side. It comes to little more:There where it is we do not need the wall:He is all pine a

6、nd I am apple orchard.My apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonderIf I could put a notion in his head:“Why do they make good neighbors? Isnt itWhere there are cows? But her

7、e there are no cows.Before I built a wall Id ask to knowWhat I was walling in or walling out,And to whom I was like to give offence.Something there is that doesnt love a wall,That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,But its not elves exactly, and Id ratherHe said it for himself. I see him the

8、reBringing a stone grasped firmly by the topIn each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.He moves in darkness as it seems to me,Not of woods only and the shade of trees.He will not go behind his fathers saying,And he likes having thought of it so wellHe says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

9、Topics for after-reading discussion:1) Who are the two men in the poem? What do they do in the poem? Why does the wall in the poem need to be fixed?2) The poem contrasts two different ideas about mending walls. Describe themthe ideas and how they are expressed. 3) Is the speaker humorous or self-con

10、tradictory (or both)? Why does the speaker repairs the holes made by hunters, and inform his neighbor of the gaps if he does not find the wall necessary? Why does the speaker want to change his neighbor?4) Does the wall stand for something else? Is it a symbol? Text B Fire and IcePre-reading questio

11、ns:1) If the world would end some day, how would it happen? Why?2) What emotion do you think is very destructive?Fire and IceSome say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what Ive tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateT

12、o say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.Topics for after-reading discussion:1) In what two ways do “some say” the world will end? With whom does the speaker “hold”?2) What emotion does each of the natural elements in the poem represent? What does the speaker suggest that these e

13、motions have in common? What emotions, aside from the ones referred to in the poem, do you think bring out destructive impulses in people?3) Why does the speaker in Fire and Ice prefer for the world to end in fire? What kind of tone do you hear in the language, rhythm, and rhyme of this poem?4) In t

14、his poem the speaker approaches a very serious subject in a seemingly casual manner. What might have been Frosts reasons for taking this type of approach?Text C Birch Pre-reading questions: 1) How do you think of the world of your childhood and adulthood?2) What may bend birches?BirchWhen I see birc

15、hes bend to left and rightAcross the lines of straighter darker trees,I like to think some boys been swinging them.But swinging doesnt bend them down to stayAs ice storms do1. Often you must have seen them 5Loaded with ice a sunny winter morningAfter a rain. They click upon themselvesAs the breeze r

16、ises, and turn many-coloredAs the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.Soon the suns warmth makes them shed crystal shells 10Shattering and avalanching on the snow crust-Such heaps of broken glass to sweep awayYoud think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.They are dragged to the withered bracken2 by

17、 the load,And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed 15So low for long, they never right themselves:You may see their trunks arching in the woodsYears afterwards, trailing their leaves on the groundLike girls on hands and knees that throw their hairBefore them over their heads to dry in

18、the sun. 20But I was going to say when Truth broke inWith all her matter of fact about the ice storm,(Now am I free to be poetical?)3I should prefer to have some boy bend themAs he went out and in to fetch the cows-Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, 25Whose only play was what he found him

19、self,Summer or winter, and could play alone.One by one he subdued his fathers treesBy riding them down over and over againUntil he took the stiffness out of them, 30And not one but hung limp, not one was leftFor him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soonAnd so

20、 not carrying the tree awayClear to the ground. He always kept his poise 35To the top branches, climbing carefullyWith the same pains you use to fill a cupUp to the brim, and even above the brim.Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. 40So

21、was I once myself a swinger of birches.And so I dream of going back to be.Its when Im weary of considerations,And life is too much like a pathless woodWhere your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs 45Broken across it, and one eye is weepingFrom a twigs having lashed across it open.Id like to get

22、 away from earth awhileAnd then come back to it and begin over.May not fate willfully misunderstand me 50And half grant what I wish and snatch me awayNot to return. Earths the right place for love:I dont know where its likely to go better.Id like to go by climbing a birch tree,And climb black branch

23、es up a snow-white trunk 55Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,But dipped its top and set me down again.That would be good both going and coming back.One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.Notes:1. Ice-storms do that. As ice-storms do. in Robert Frost, Collected Poems, Prose, &

24、Plays (Library of America, 1995), p. 117 (a later, revised text).2. bracken: a fern with large leaves and creeping roots, often found in clusters.3. Line omitted in Library of America edition.4. a snow-white trunk: birches have a white barkTopics for after-reading discussion:1) How many parts can th

25、e poem be divided into?2) What age is the speaker? What he is recalling? What is his attitude toward the memory?3) What bends the birches in the poem? What does the speaker in the poem prefer to bend branches? Why?4) Why does the speaker desire to be a swinger of birches “both going and coming back”

26、?Text D Nothing Gold Can StayPre-reading questions:1) How do you understand the title “Nothing Gold Can Stay”?2) What do you think would be gold in nature?NOTHING GOLD CAN STAYNatures first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leafs a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to l

27、eaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.Topics for after-reading discussion:1) How many gold things are suggested in Nothing Gold Can Stay? What happens to each of the elements in nature mentioned in the poem?2) What is the poems theme, or main point?3) Do you agr

28、ee with the outlook expressed in this poem? Why or why not?3. Assigned reading After Apple-Picking My long two-pointed ladders sticking through a tree 1Toward heaven still,And theres a barrel that I didnt fillBeside it, and there may be two or threeApples I didnt pick upon some bough. 5But I am done

29、 with apple-picking now.Essence of winter sleep is on the night,The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.I cannot rub the strangeness from my sightI got from looking through a pane of glass 10I skimmed this morning from the drinking troughAnd held against the world of hoary grass.It melted, and I let

30、it fall and break.But I was wellUpon my way to sleep before it fell, 15And I could tellWhat form my dreaming was about to take.Magnified apples appear and disappear,Stem end and blossom end,And every fleck of russet showing dear. 20My instep arch not only keeps the ache,It keeps the pressure of a la

31、dder-round.I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.And I keep hearing from the cellar binThe rumbling sound 25Of load on load of apples coming in.For I have had too muchOf apple-picking: I am overtiredOf the great harvest I myself desired.There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, 30Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.For allThat struck the earth,No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,Went surely to the cider-apple heap 35As of no worth.One can see what will t