A Boy's Will & North of Boston

Robert Frost came into public view with "A Boy's Will" and "North of Boston," his first short collections of poetry. While Frost's "voice" is a bit unformed in these poems, the rich ponderings of nature and love are strong, full of "sun-saturated meadows," melancholy looks at life and death, and pearly streams. "I should not be withheld but that some day/Into their vastness I should steal away," Frost announces in the first poem of "A Boy's Will." He follows up this statement with everything from eerie story-poems ("Love and a Question") to exultant ("A Prayer in Spring") to melancholy meditations on nature's beauty, love, and broken hearts. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," is the first line of one of Frost's more typical poems in "North of Boston," a nuanced work about neighbors rebuilding a wall between them. But then there are poems like "Death of the Hired Man," a long conversation between a man and his wife, about a former worker who has returned home to die. Another is just about a mountain, as told by a farmhand. Poets take a while to reach their peak, and Frost was still starting out in these books. That said, it's astounding how good he was even in his first volume of poetry. Most striking is Frost's passion -- his enthusiasm, sorrow and thoughts seem to spill off the page. While Frost is more ethereal, even dreamy, in a "A Boy's Will," both collections possess Frost's exquisite phrasing. "North of Boston" just focuses a little more on the mundane, like hotels, farms and strangers.