Though Robert Frost is known as a New Englander, he was actually born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. Of Scottish ancestry, Frost was much like many poets, the son of an academic. His father worked first as a teacher then moved on to a career in journalism.

Frost lived in California until he reached the age of eleven. Upon the death of his father he moved to Massachusetts with his mother and sister to live near his paternal grandparents. Frost published his first poem in Lawrence, Massachusetts, then went on to attend Dartmouth College in 1892 for just one semester.

He then returned home to teach and work in a variety of areas, including delivering newspapers. In 1894, he sold his first poem to the New York Independent, a poem entitled, "My Butterfly."

Frost married Elinor Miriam White, the co-valedictorian of their high-school class in 1895. The two would teach school until 1897 when the poet entered Harvard University for two years. His first book of poetry, "A Boy's Will," was published in 1913. Frost then traveled to England where he met Edward Thomas, T. E. Hulme, and Ezra Pound. It is generally stated that Frost did some of his best work while living abroad.

Frost returned to America in 1915 and purchased a farm in New Hampshire. From that time until his death, the poet taught and lectured, working at Amherst College in Massachusetts and at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Frost's fame as poet grew out of his ability to take rural life and use it to explore the complex world, examining both social and philosophical themes. His poem, "The Road Not Taken," perhaps represents that style best.

Robert Frost died in Boston, on January 29, 1963.

The Road Not Taken

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;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy 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 trodden 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.