Robert Frost was a traditional American poet. Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California. At the age of eleven, he moved to New England; during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts, he became interested in reading and writing poetry. He enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892 but dropped out after only one term and later enrolled at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree. Frost had several odd jobs before becoming a poet: farmer, teacher at Pinkerton Academy and at the state normal school in Plymouth, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White; in 1912, they moved to New England because their farm in New Hampshire failed. His wife was a major inspiration in his poetry until she died in 1938.
Robert Frost, the traditional American Poet, expresses his paganist beliefs throughout his poetry. One who is pagan is a person who is not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim. ( http://dictionary.reference.com/) Frost, being a person who was not Christian, expresses his paganism throughout many of his poems. There are three poems particularly that expresses his paganist views: "Birches", "After Apple Picking", and "Desert Places". Both poems, “After Apple-Picking” and “Birches”, does not focus on the Christian interest in the after-life but rather more focus on the interests in things native to New England.
"Birches", first published in the Atlantic Monthly in August of 1915, is one of Robert Frost’s most popular poems. Frost’s paganist views are expressed throughout this poem. “You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen” (L13), which evidences that Frost had lost his Christian faith. Heaven is the afterlife to all Christians, which would never fail to exist. Frost also implies, “Earth’s the right place for love; I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.” (L52-53), which indicates that he is not a Christian because he shows the reader that
Cited: Arp, Thomas. Perrine 's Literature Structure, Sound, & Sense. tenth . Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. 698-99. Print. Arp, Thomas. Perrine. tenth . Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. 790. Print. Arp, Thomas. Perrine. tenth . Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. 963-64. Print. Robert Frost. www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/. Internet.