Starting Out on a Frosty Trail Quiz

Answer: morning

"I left you in the morning,
And in the morning glow
You walked a way beside me
To make me sad to go."

'Flower-Gathering' was first published in 1913 in Frost's first book 'A Boy's Will'. This collection of his poetry was published in London, England.

Answer: October

"O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all."

'October' was also part of the collection in 'A Boy's Will' (1913), published when Frost was thirty-nine years old. It was after this collection of poetry was published that Frost became well known, even though he had had his first poem published when he was nineteen.

Answer: Picking apples

"My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough."

'After Apple-Picking' was published in the second book, 'North of Boston' (1914). The apples are thought to be a metaphor for opportunities, when the narrator is considering his life that has passed.

Answer: Two

"Two roads diverged 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 where it bent in the undergrowth;"

'The Road Not Taken' was published in 'Mountain Interval'(1916) after Frost's return to America. The poem explores choices that are made, literally and figuratively.

Answer: Its song

"There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again."

'The Oven Bird' was published in 'Mountain Interval'(1916).
The ovenbird is a migratory songbird of the warbler family. Frost would have heard its song in New Hampshire in spring and summer, before it migrated south for the winter.

Answer: Birches

"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."

'Birches' was also published in the 1916 collection 'Mountain Interval'. Sadly, the narrator acknowledges in the poem, that the birches are bent by the ice storms, not by swinging.

Answer: The buzz saw

"The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it."

'Out, Out -' was published in 'Mountain Interval'(1916).
Buzz saws are also known as circular saws and are common in timber saw mills.

Answer: Ice

"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice."

'Fire and Ice' was first published in 'New Hampshire'(1923). It had previously been published in the December 1920 edition of 'Harper's Magazine'.

Answer: night

"I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light."

'Acquainted with the Night' was published in the 1928 collection 'West-Running Brook'.
This poem is often interpreted as referring to depression.

Answer: The middleness

"The road at the top of the rise
Seems to come to an end
And take off into the skies."

'The Middleness of the Road' was published in the 1947 collection 'Steeple Bush'. It had previously been published the year before in the 'Virginia Quarterly Review'.