VOA慢速英语2011--Robert Frost, 1874-1963: Most Americans

PEOPLE IN AMERICA - Robert Frost, 1874-1963: Most Americans Can Quote His Poems

STEVE EMBER: I'm Steve Ember.
FAITH LAPIDUS: And I'm Faith Lapidus with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Today we finish the story of Robert Frost and his poetry.
STEVE EMBER: When Robert Frost left the United States in nineteen twelve he was an unknown writer. When he returned from Britain three years later he was on his way to becoming one of America's most honored writers. Publishers who had rejected his books now competed against each other to publish them.
Unlike many poets of his time, Frost wrote in traditional forms. He said that not using them was like playing a game that had no rules. He joined the rules of the form with the naturalness of common speech. Other poets before him had tried to do this, but none with Frost's skill.
FAITH LAPIDUS: The common speech Frost used had the words and way of speaking that was clearly American. For example, a poem called "The Death of the Hired Man" begins:
ROBERT FROST:
Mary sat musing¹ on the lamp-flame at the table,
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tiptoe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway² with the news
And put him on his guard. “Silas is back.”
Robert Frost was forty years old before Americans began to read his poems and praise them.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Frost is telling a story about an old farm worker named Silas. The discussion between Warren and Mary continues:
ROBERT FROST:
She pushed Warren outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. “Be kind,” she said.
She took the market things from Warren's arms
And set them on the porch³, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Warren says:
ROBERT FROST:
“When was I ever anything but kind to him?
But I'll not have the fellow back,” he said.
“I told him so last haying, didn't I?
If he left then, I said, that ended it.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: And Mary says:
ROBERT FROST:
“He's worn out. He's asleep beside the stove.
When I came up from Rowe's I found him here,
Huddled⁴ against the barndoor fast asleep. . . .”
Robert Frost had an unhappy childhood which some believe helped make him a very good writer
STEVE EMBER: Through the discussion between Warren and Mary the reader discovers more and more about Silas. In some ways he is a good worker, but he usually disappears when he is most needed. He does not earn much money. He has his own ideas about the way farm work should be done. And he has his own ideas about himself. Instead of asking for help from his rich brother, Silas has come to Warren and Mary. She says:
ROBERT FROST:
“... he has come home to die:
You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time.”
“Home,” he mocked⁵ gently.
STEVE EMBER: She answers:
ROBERT FROST:
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”
STEVE EMBER: Without ever having Silas speak, Frost has made the reader know this tired old man, who has come to die in the only home he has. In the final lines of the poem the story of Silas is completed. Mary says:
ROBERT FROST:
Warren returned -- too soon, it seemed to her --
Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.
“Warren?” she questioned.
“Dead,” was all he answered.
STEVE EMBER: The poem tells of the understanding that Mary and Warren have for a man who has worked for them for many years. The poem also presents a sadness that Frost repeats many times.
(MUSIC)
FAITH LAPIDUS: Robert Frost was like an earlier New England writer and thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson. They never were good at joining others in programs or movements. Frost was politically conservative⁶ and avoided movements of the left or right. He did this not because he did not support their beliefs, but because they were group projects.
In the poem "Mending Wall" the speaker and his neighbor walk together along a wall, repairing the damage caused by winter weather:
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH:
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen⁷-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders⁸ in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast…
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
FAITH LAPIDUS: The speaker questions his neighbor who says: "Good fences make good neighbors. " The speaker says:
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH:
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense⁹.
As he grew older, Robert Frost's idea of the world became more difficult
STEVE EMBER: Robert Frost's later poetry shows little change or development from his earlier writing. It confirms what he had established in such early books as “North of Boston.” For example, a poem called "Birches," written in nineteen sixteen begins:
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH:
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.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice storms do.
STEVE EMBER: And it ends:
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH:
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
(MUSIC)
FAITH LAPIDUS: In the nature poems there is often a comparison between what the poet sees and what he feels. It is what Frost in one poem calls the difference between "outer and inner weather." Under the common speech of the person saying the poem is a dark picture of the world. In "The Road Not Taken" he says:
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH:
Two roads diverged¹⁰ 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 bent¹¹ in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy¹² and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden¹³ black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Poet Robert Frost poses¹⁴ at a dinner at the Theodore Roosevelt Association in New York, 1954
STEVE EMBER: Among Frost's nature poems, there are more about winter than about any other season. Even the poems about spring, autumn, or summer remember winter. They are not poems about happiness found in nature. They are moments of resistance to time and its changes. And even the poems that tell stories are mainly pictures of people who are alone.
Frost shared with Emerson the idea that everybody was a separate individual, and that groups weakened individuals. But where Emerson and those who followed him looked at God and saw a creator, Frost saw what he says is "no expression, nothing to express." Frost sees the world as a "desert place. "
In a poem called "Desert Places," he says:
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH:
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered¹⁵ in their lairs¹⁶.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted¹⁷ snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Robert Frost received almost every honor a writer could receive. He won the Pulitzer Prize for literature four times. In nineteen sixty, Congress honored Frost with a gold medal for what he had given to the culture of the United States.
In the last years of his life, Frost was no longer producing great poetry, but he represented the value of poetry in human life. He often taught, and he gave talks. Usually he would be asked to read his best known poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:"
ROBERT FROST:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer¹⁸
To stop without a farmhouse¹⁹ near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake²⁰.
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.
STEVE EMBER: Robert Frost died in nineteen sixty-three. He had lived for almost one hundred years, and had covered many miles before he slept, many miles before he slept.
(MUSIC)
FAITH LAPIDUS: This program was written by Richard Thorman and produced by Dana Demange. The poetry reader was Shirley Griffith. I'm Faith Lapidus.
STEVE EMBER: And I'm Steve Ember. Our programs are online with transcripts²¹ and MP3 files at voaspecialenglish.com. And you can find us on Facebook and YouTube at VOA Learning English. Join us again next week for PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English.

1 musing   

n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• "At Tellson's banking-house at nine," he said, with a musing face. “九点在台尔森银行大厦见面，”他想道。 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
• She put the jacket away, and stood by musing a minute. 她把那件上衣放到一边，站着沉思了一会儿。

2 doorway   

n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径

参考例句：

• They huddled in the shop doorway to shelter from the rain.他们挤在商店门口躲雨。
• Mary suddenly appeared in the doorway.玛丽突然出现在门口。

3 porch   

n.门廊，入口处，走廊，游廊

参考例句：

• There are thousands of pages of advertising on our porch.有成千上万页广告堆在我们的门廊上。
• The porch is supported by six immense pillars.门廊由六根大柱子支撑着。

4 huddled   

挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• We huddled together for warmth. 我们挤在一块取暖。
• We huddled together to keep warm. 我们挤在一起来保暖。

5 mocked   

愚弄，嘲弄( mock的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 不尊重，蔑视

参考例句：

• Those who mock history will be mocked by history. 嘲弄历史的人必将被历史所嘲弄。
• The river mocked all the enemy's efforts to cross. 敌人作了一切努力还是没能过河。

6 conservative   

adj.保守的，守旧的；n.保守的人，保守派

参考例句：

• He is a conservative member of the church.他是一个守旧教会教友。
• The young man is very conservative.这个年轻人很守旧。

7 frozen   

adj.冻结的，冰冻的

参考例句：

• He was frozen to death on a snowing night.在一个风雪的晚上，他被冻死了。
• The weather is cold and the ground is frozen.天寒地冻。

8 boulders   

n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾

参考例句：

• Seals basked on boulders in a flat calm. 海面风平浪静，海豹在巨石上晒太阳。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The river takes a headlong plunge into a maelstrom of rocks and boulders. 河水急流而下，入一个漂砾的漩涡中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 offense   

n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪

参考例句：

• I hope you will not take any offense at my words. 对我讲的话请别见怪。
• His words gave great offense to everybody present.他的发言冲犯了在场的所有人。

10 diverged   

分开( diverge的过去式和过去分词 )； 偏离； 分歧； 分道扬镳

参考例句：

• Who knows when we'll meet again? 不知几时咱们能再见面！
• At what time do you get up? 你几时起床？

11 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

12 grassy   

adj.盖满草的；长满草的

参考例句：

• They sat and had their lunch on a grassy hillside.他们坐在长满草的山坡上吃午饭。
• Cattle move freely across the grassy plain.牛群自由自在地走过草原。

13 trodden   

v.踩，踏( tread的过去分词 )；踩成；踏出；步行于

参考例句：

• The people have been trodden down for too long. 人民受践踏的时间太久了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The cattle had trodden a path to the pond. 牛群踏出了一条通往池塘的小径。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

14 poses   

使摆姿势( pose的第三人称单数 )； 以…身份出现； 招摇； 炫耀

参考例句：

• This poses a threat to agriculture and the food chain, and consequently to human health. 这会对农业和食物链造成威胁，由此而危及人的健康。
• The high cost of oil poses serious problems for industry. 昂贵的石油价格给工业造成了严重困难。

15 smothered   

（使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制

参考例句：

• He smothered the baby with a pillow. 他用枕头把婴儿闷死了。
• The fire is smothered by ashes. 火被灰闷熄了。

16 lairs   

n.（野兽的）巢穴，窝( lair的名词复数 )；（人的）藏身处

参考例句：

• Beholders usually carve out underground lairs for themselves using their disintegrate rays. 眼魔经常用它们的解离射线雕刻自己的地底巢穴。 来自互联网
• All animals are smothered in their lairs. 所有的小生灵都躲在巢穴里冬眠。 来自互联网

17 benighted   

adj.蒙昧的

参考例句：

• Listen to both sides and you will be enlightened,heed only one side and you will be benighted.兼听则明，偏信则暗。
• Famine hit that benighted country once more.饥荒再次席卷了那个蒙昧的国家。

18 queer   

adj.奇怪的，异常的，不舒服的，眩晕的

参考例句：

• I heard some queer footsteps.我听到某种可疑的脚步声。
• She has been queer lately.她最近身体不舒服。

19 farmhouse   

n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房）

参考例句：

• We fell for the farmhouse as soon as we saw it.我们对那所农舍一见倾心。
• We put up for the night at a farmhouse.我们在一间农舍投宿了一夜。

20 flake   

v.使成薄片；雪片般落下；n.薄片

参考例句：

• Drain the salmon,discard the skin,crush the bones and flake the salmon with a fork.将鲑鱼沥干，去表皮，粉碎鱼骨并用餐叉子将鱼肉切成小薄片状。
• The paint's beginning to flake.油漆开始剥落了。

21 transcripts   

n.抄本（ transcript的名词复数 ）；转写本；文字本；副本

参考例句：

• Like mRNA, both tRNA and rRNA are transcripts of chromosomal DNA. tRNA及rRNA同mRNA一样，都是染色体DNA的转录产物。 来自辞典例句
• You can't take the transfer students'exam without your transcripts. 没有成绩证明书，你就不能参加转学考试。 来自辞典例句