New England anthology; Robert Frost

The following tape recorded program is a presentation of the National Association of educational broadcasters. The Literary Society of the University of Massachusetts presents New England anthology and expression and poetry of the American concept of the free man by writers who make use of the New England scene. Background or heritage. This program the last of our series will present a voice and poems of one of America's greatest writers Robert Frost about the poets of yours the New England background as a means of communicating their belief in human freedom. The best known is the man who's with us today. In recent years it's become more and more evident. Mr. Frost speaks not only to the region with which he's been identified for so long but to the entire country. And we believe to the world because Mr. Frost has been read so widely ever since north of Boston and the boys will were published many years ago. We feel that an elaborate introduction would be superfluous. He's agreed

to say a few of his poems and talk about them. Mr. Frost. The so content this one has something to do with your. Chosen subject and freedoms and they hear it's almost doctrine although you wouldn't might not notice it it seems to be about a lady. A sort of content kid is as in a field a silken tent at midday when a sunny summer breeze is dried the dough and all its ropes relent so that in guise a gently sways a dais and its supporting central cedar pole that is it's been a call to heaven word and signifies the sureness of the solo seems to wole not to any single chord but strictly held by now I'm as loosely bound by countless souq and ties of love and thought to

everything on earth the compass round and only by ones going slightly taut in the capriciousness of summer is of the slightest bondage made aware. See you sometimes. Think that of all a man is Izzy's Ty's. What freedom can there be. There's a little central mob where all the ties made and that's about all there is to personality. The Thais as I read chiefly and they look like bondage but as it says they're. Complex so can tires of love unsought take away what looks like freedom. Complex so can ties of love and thought to everything on earth is the compass round and only by one's going slightly top

notch on land and the capriciousness of life is of the slightest bondage made aware we live in that bondage without much sense. Whether I would any such loss of freedom or any feeling of loss freedom. The Road Not Taken. Toll Road 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 to lead it bent in the undergrowth and took the other as just as fair and having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted way though as for that the passing dad was on them really about the same and both that morning equally lay In leaves no step but trodden black. I kept the first for another day yet knowing how way leads on the way I doubted if I should ever come back.

I should be telling this with the size somewhere ages and ages hence Two roads diverged in a wood and die. I took the one less traveled by And that has made all the difference stumping by wood on a Snowy Evening. Whose word is easy. I think I know his house is in the village. He will not see me stopping here to watch his words set up with snow. My little horse must think it queer to stop without a firearm near between the woods and frozen lake the darkest evening of the year. It gives his harness bells a shake to ask if there is some mistake. The only other side is the sway of the Easy Wind and down the flake The woods are lovely dark and date. But I have promises to Kate and miles to go before I sleep And miles to go before I sleep.

This one is called desert places. Snow falling and night falling fast all fast in a food I looked into going past and the ground almost covered snows in snow but a few weeds and stubble showing last the roads around it have it it is that line of Moses smothered in their lairs I am too absent spirited to come to loneliness includes me unawares and long as it is that loneliness will be more lonely it will be less a Blanco lightness a been I did snow with no expression nothing to express. They cannot scare me with their desert places on style and style. I swear no human right says I have it in me so much narrowing to scare myself with my own desert places.

Come in as I came to the edge of the wood thrush music now it was dusk outside inside and it was down to dock in the woods for a bud by sleight of weighing the batteries but for the night though he still could sing the last of the light of the sun that had died in the way I still have to run so I'm on the freshest brightest fire in the pile of fresh Musicland almost like a call to come into the dock and let my hand but know I was out of the sky so I would not come in and then not even have asked and I hadn't been. My long two pointed ladder's sticking through a tree toward heaven still and there's about I didn't feel decided and then maybe two or three apples I didn't pick up on some bio

but I am done with Apple taking our essence and went to sleep because on the night the scent of apples I'm drowsing off I can lip rub the strangeness from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass I skin this morning from the drinking trough and held against the world of horrid grass it melted and I let fall and break. But I was well upon my way to sleep before it fell and I could tell what form my dreaming was about to take. Magnified apples appear and disappear stem end and blossom end and every fleck of russet showing clear my instep by Arch not only keeps the egg it keeps the pressure of the ladder around I feel lighter sway as the boughs band and I keep hearing from the cellar bin the rumbling sound of load onload of lapis coming in for I have had too much of Apple thinking I'm over tired of the great harvest time myself

desire. There were ten thousand thousand for the Dutch cherish in hand left down and not let fall fall and struck the earth. No matter if not Brewster spiked with stubble when surely to the cider apple heap as of no words one can see what will trouble the sleep of mind whatever sleep it is. Worry not go on the road Joe could say whether it's like his long sleep as I describe his coming on or just some human slave. Spring pools these are the ice coolers all along the northern states at this time of the year. These are stuffed and forest still reflect the total sky almost without defect and like the flowers beside them chill and shiver. Well like the flowers beside them soon be gone and yet not out by any broker rever but up by rote to bring Darkfall each on

the trees that have it in their pent up but the darkened nature and the summer woods let them think twice before they use their power stop blot out and drink up and sweep away these flowery waters and these watery flowers from snow that melted only yesterday. But just this and blank verse and rhyme and meter so far this is all he needed. I would I couldn't have written verse or leisure years without having considered the matter of freedom. I was I was around they were the free verse writers and the people who talk of that kind talked of that as if that gave them the most freedom to be more sincere. I only get nearer the truth. And I was never from ALWAYS THE WORLD from instead of or are

there is freedom from tyranny which is what we mean by our freedom in the in the state freedom from tyranny that's all we mean. And that's all we have to be watchful of. But the great interest in life is not freedom from things but it's freedom up things the freedom of the city for instance. The freedom I have my material the freedom I have the dictionary I had to take on the dictionary assume responsibility for the dictionary I had to take on the grammar. I had to take on the grammar to the extent of the idiom I had to have feel that I had attained to the freedom I was the good of the Dictionary of the grammar of the would be him.

And then in a sudden exuberance of spirit a kind of exultation I felt like taking on the freedom out of rhyme and meter and the whole of education is not a freedom from anything not from anything. It's it's like being given the keys of the City of Light. It's the freedom I have. The City of Light I got last year I had that was given the keys of the city of Gloucester myself. I never was given the keys of a city before but I long since i hope was given the phrase the keys of the City of Light which we call education. When I see birches bend to left and right across the lines of straighter darker trees I like to think some boy's been swinging them but

swinging doesn't bend them down the stairs I stomp still often you must have seen them loaded with ice a sunny winter morning after a rain. They click upon themselves as the breeze rises and turn many colored as the stone cracks and crazes their own ammo. Soon the sun swamps makes them shed Christo show shattering an avalanche in on the snow crust. Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away you'd think you know Dormer have not fallen. They are dragged to the withered Bracken by the load and they seem not to break the once they're bowed so low for long they never write themselves you may see their trunks arching in the woods years afterward trailing their leaves on the ground like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when truth broke in was all a matter of fact about the ice storm I should prefer to have had somebody bend them as he went out or into vets the collars. Somebody from time to learn baseball whose only play was

when he found himself summer winter and could play alone one by one. He subdued his father strays by writing them down over and over again until he took the stiffness out of them and not one but hung limp. Not one was left for him to conquer. He learned all there was to learn about not launching out too soon and so not carrying the tray away clear to the ground he always kept his poise to the top branches climbing carefully with the same pains you used to fill a cup up to the brim and even above the brim. Then he flung outward first with a swish kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. So I dream of going back to B. It's when I am weary of consideration. Life is too much like a pathless wood where your face burns and take us with the cobwebs broken across it and one eye is weeping from the twigs having lice to cross it open. I like to get

away from Earth awhile then come back to it and begin over. May no faith wilfully misunderstand me and have grant what I wish and snatch me away not to return to the right place for love but I don't know where it's likely to go better. I like to go rock climbing about a train climb black branches up a snow white trunk thought I'd have until the tree could bury my mom but Depp did stop and set me down again. That would be a good buzz going and coming back one could do worse than be a swinging of broaches. This one is about freedom from something. This happens to be my larger interest as I say is freedom mild not freedom FROM. My objection to much of our politics is that it's a talk about freedom from instead of freedom mob as if this is what this is our original Freedom from colonialism. We were the

beginning I was a Revolutionary War was the beginning of the end of colonialism. 1875 1775. The land was ours before we were there. She was our land more than a hundred years before we were her people. She was ours in Massachusetts in Virginia but we were England's still Colonials possessing what we still were one possessed by possessed by what we now know more possessed something we were withholding made us weak until we found out that it was ourselves we were withholding from our land of living and forthwith find salvation and surrender such as we were. We gave ourselves out right the deed of gift. It was many deeds of war to the land they delay realizing westward. But still on story artless unenhanced such as she was such

as she would become a soldier. He insists that fall in line so that lies as it lies I'm left did not come do come rust but still eyes pointed as a cloud the dust is raining whose side along it round the world see nothing would they do a bend its market is because like men we look to. Forgetting that is fitted to the stair our missiles always make too short and they fall hard there at the grass. They intersect the curve of us and striking back their own they make us cringe from metal point on stone. But this we know the obstacle. Check them tread the body shot the spirit on further than Target ever showed a shot. This is about a drumline woodchuck through a Jack speaking and this

is in rhyme. My own strategic retreat is where two rocks almost meet and still more secure and snug good to dog barrel I dug with those in mind at my back I can set thought exposed to attack as one who shrewdly put tents that he in the world of friends prefer to live as a little whistle we give and flash at the least alarm we dive down on the farm. We allow some time for guile and don't come out for a while either to eat or drink. We take occasion to think. But if after the hunt goes past in the double barrel blast like with pestilence and the loss of common sense. If I can with confidence say that still for another day and even another year I will be there for you my dear. It will be because those small eyes measured against the All I have been so instinctively thorough about my crevice and bio.

One step backward taken. This is about two or three fresh sheets I've seen in New England and one great freshet I saw and I was on it's way things put together in a strange way. Not only sands and gravels where once more on that travels but gulping money gallons of great boaters off the balance bumped heads together gully and started down the gully hole capes caked off in slices. I felt my standpoint shaken in the universal crisis but with one step backward taken. I saved myself from going away. Time lows went by me. Then the rain stopped and the blowing and the sun came out to dry me directed back out of all this not too much for us. Back in a time made simpler by the loss of detail but I'm dissolved and broken

off like a graveyard marble sculpture in the weather. There is a house that is not my house upon a farm that is now modified and in a town that is no more a town. If you let a guy direct you on a hazard heart you're getting lost. May seem as if it should have been a choir a great monolithic NE's the former tongue long since gave up or tense of keeping covered and there's a story in a book about it besides the wearer of iron wagon wheels the ledges show lines ruled South East North West. The chisel work of an enormous glacier that braced his feet against the Arctic Pole. You must not mind a certain coolness from him still said to haunt the side. A Panther mountain. No need your mind the serial ordeal of being washed from forty sallow horses it by III pairs out of forty firkins As for the woods excitement over you or that sends a

slight rustle of rushes through their leaves. Charge that two upstart in experience where they are not twenty years ago. They think too much of having shaded out a few will think of credit apple trees. Make yourself up a cheering song of how someone's rode home from work this once was who maybe just ahead of you run forward or creaking with the buggy load of grain. The height of the adventure is the height of country where two village cultures faded into each other. Both of them I lost. And if you're lost enough to find yourself by now I'll call in your lighter road behind your and put a sign up close to all but me. Then make yourself at home. The only thing you now lets no bigger than a harness call. First there's the children's house of make believe some shattered dishes underneath the pine the playthings in the player house of the children

wait for what little things could make them glad. Then for the house it is no model house but only a belie like cello now is slowly closing like a dent in dough. This was no playhouse but a house in a honest your destination and your destinies. A book that was the water of the house cold as a spring is yet so near its source too lofty an original to arrange. We know the Valley Stream so that when I roused will be there tatters hung on Bob and so on. I have kept hidden in the instep arch of an old Si do it the water side a broken drinking goblet like the Grail under a spammer saw the wrong ones can't find it so can't get saved to Saint Mark says they mustn't. I stole a goblet from the children's playhouse. Here are your

waters and your watering place. Drink can be whole again beyond confusion. I liked Ellen when I asked why I write instead of progress when there's good honest problems to write I say I write the all these problems see if I can make them sound different from each other. And this one as I'm going to say to you for the very. For the difference in the sound as color probably had probably just like that. The rage that came with the weather tag to wash the steps with pail and drag was once to be able to take the picture pride of Hollywood to a man a fall from grace good for you to doubt the likelihood dire and avoid the fate already predestined to die. Make up your mind to die and stay. Make the whole stock exchange your own if need be occupy a throng

where nobody can call you crown. Some have relied on what they know. Others on being simply true. What works for them might work for you. No memory of having starred makes up for later disregard a keeps the end from being hot. That I don't know and I'm dignified with Barton friendship at your side and none Atar provide progress. Departmental This is the heavy duty one and I am on the tablecloth ran into Adama. Mark many times his size. He showed not the least surprise. His business wasn't with such. He gave it scarcely a touch and resigned from his duty run but if he encountered one of the hives inquiry squad whose work is to find out God and the nature of time and space he would put him on to the case. Answer A curious race one crossing with hurried tread.

The body of one of the Dead isn't given a moment's arrest seems not even impressed. But he no doubt reports to run it with homely courses and turning and they no doubt report to the higher up at court then word goes forth and form a desk. Come to Jerry McCormick selfless for a judge. Gerri Willis special Janissary whose office it is to bury the dead of the commissary. Go bring him home to his people lay him in state on the sable wrap and for sure out in a battle and bomb him with like a row of metal. This is the word of your queen. And presently on the scene appears a solemn Artesian and taking a formal position with steelers calmly I twiddle since is the dead by the metal and heaving him high in air carries a mile. No one stands around to stir it is nobody else's affair. It couldn't be called on gentle but hollow solely by a

mental one to something like a stock. Oh stop the fairest one in sight. We grant Your Loftiness to right to some obscurity of cloud. I was about to say of my own doc is what brings out your light some mystery becomes the problem. But they'll be wholly taciturn in your reserve. His not allowed to say something to us we can learn by heart and let alone read bade say something and it says I. But say with what degree of heat talk fam I talk cent.. It was language we can comprehend. Tell us what element she'll blend. It gives a strangely little aid but does say something in the end and steadfast as Keats ever in my not even stooping from its favorite As to little of us here at asd. Some of us a certain height so when at

times the mob is swayed to carry praise or blame too far we may take something like a stock to stat minds on and be staid. It's been a great pleasure to hear the poetry and comments of proper Prof. This was the 10th and final program of New England then biology and expression and poetry of the American concept of the free man by writers who make use of the New England scene background or heritage. In addition to Mr Frost such eminent poets as Wallace Stevens Archibald MacLeish Robert Francis and Richard Wilbur have been heard on this series New England anthology has been an attempt to explore that concept of the free man entertained by the poets of this region. Now that the programs have been concluded we've come to realize that most of the poets in spite of their striking differences in style and temperament actually agree in

giving expression to the same basic concept of human freedom. Their agreement has been shown not so much by giving allegiance to an abstract principle of freedom but by dramatizing in similar symbolic gestures. The free man and his problems. A recurrent motif in many of the programs was the thought that a man can hope to determine his own fate. Then we must acknowledge his limitations. Some of the poets going even further suggest that only by acknowledging limitations can man hope to achieve freedom. Robert Frost is often referred to the wild freeways of wit and art but he's also said that the thing that art does for life is to strip it too far even more than other creative geniuses the poets have understood that without form there can be no art and without freedom that can be no true vigor and originality. This program was presented by the Literary Society

of the University of Massachusetts. It was produced by the National Association of educational broadcasters under a grant from the educational television and radio centered project supervisor was Robert Tucker production director Anthony's ates technical assistance where W was to Smith and William Alford. The script was written by William Adonal and Frederick Alec. This program was produced on the campus of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Your narrator was Arthur needed. This is the ne e b network.