Robert Frost has long been considered one of America’s most beloved poets. You Come Too is a book comprised of Robert Frost’s most favored and widely enjoyed poems. As always wit, wisdom and gentleness are found in the poems that make up this wonderful book. The fact that Robert Frost spent much of his adult life living on and working farmland is evident throughout the poems found in You Come Too. Especially rewarding is how the poet continued to write and believe in his work all the while he struggled to become a literary giant. For years Robert Frost, despite how often he submitted his works to editors, was unable to find a home for his poems. The Atlantic Monthly was the first publication with a broad audience that accepted his work.
The book’s title is based on a poem (also found in the book) written by Robert Frost titled “The Pasture.” Robert Frost’s ability to balance a story, a life event, inside the body of a poem is evident while reading “The Pasture” which opens, “I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away (and wait to watch the water clear, I may): And I sha’’t be gone long. – You come too.”
Appreciation for nature intersperses itself through most of the poems in the book. Another poignant theme covered in You Come Too is the dance, the wonder, the mystery of adolescence. One of my favorite poems in the collection is “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”. The poem tells the story houses on a street the poet or the teller of the story (if not the poet) lives on. This particular poem which opens at a house in the woods, so ends, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
Readers who are seeking to make changes in their lives or who know of others who are making this attempt may especially find themselves drawing close to “The Death of the Hired Man”. I found it to be one of the most deeply moving poems in the collection. For the Robert Frost enthusiasts, yes, the famous “The Road Not Taken” is also in this collection.
Robert Frost’s is a poet whose work is timeless. Parts of his writings are quoted by peoples from various walks, cultures and nationalities even to this day, and this for a man who set off from New England in 1912, an obscure poet, in search of a better life, in search of a dream.
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Denise would love to hear from you! Read a good book? Enjoyed one of the books reviewed in this column? Contact TNCP’s book review columnist @ soulfar@aol.com
