Robert Frost, (born March 26, 1874, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.—died Jan. 29, 1963, Boston, Mass.), U.S. poet. Frost’s family moved to New England early in his life. After stints at Dartmouth College and Harvard University and a difficult period as a teacher and farmer, he moved to England and published his first collections, A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914). At the outbreak of war he returned to New England. He closely observed rural life and in his poetry endowed it with universal, even metaphysical, meaning, using colloquial language, familiar rhythms, and common symbols to express both its pastoral ideals and its dark complexities. His collections include New Hampshire (1923, Pulitzer Prize), Collected Poems (1930, Pulitzer Prize), A Further Range (1936, Pulitzer Prize), and A Witness Tree (1942, Pulitzer Prize). He was unique among American poets of the 20th century in simultaneously achieving wide popularity and deep critical admiration. Many of his poems, including “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Birches,” “The Death of the Hired Man,” “Dust of Snow,” “Fire and Ice,” and “Home Burial,” are widely anthologized.
