2 - North of Boston

Summary

North of Boston was published in 1914, just a year after A Boy's Will. By now, the Frost family had moved from Beaconsfield, twenty-five miles northwest of London, to the village of Dymock, Gloucestershire in England's West Country, to be with friends and fellow poets. The poems, many of which are long, dramatic narratives, are mostly inspired by the people, nature, and society of rural New England, but we do see some influence of his time in the United Kingdom, most notably in the poem “Mending Wall.” Because of the short amount of time between the publication of A Boy's Will and North of Boston, the poetic subjects and sources are very similar, but Frost is now introducing more precision into his poetry by using proper nouns and using specific technical terms.

For example, in the poem “A Hundred Collars,” a large-necked salesman mocks his less muscular roommate by calling him “Professor Square-the-circle-till-you're tired,” a reference to a mathematical problem that had stumped geometers since Babylonian times. Frost includes a reference to a daguerreotype, an early photographic technique, in the “The Black Cottage.” Frost uses specific farming language in this collection as well, including “stanchion” in “A Servant to Servants”; “jag” in “The Code”; “ditch the meadow,” in “The Death of the Hired Man”; and “off-side flank” in “The Mountain.” He also refers to a specific breed of chicken, the “Langshan,” in “The Housekeeper,” and uses the Latin binomial, or scientific name, Cyprepedium reginae, to identify a species of orchid, in “The Self-Seeker.” In that same poem, Frost refers to the naturalist John Burroughs, making him the first scientific expert to appear in Frost's poetry by name, later to be followed by such greats as Charles Darwin and Thomas Edison. Although beyond the purview of this book, the careful reader will also notice references to specific locations such as Gettysburg and Fredericksburg, civil war battle sites, and other people, such as the abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and John Greenleaf Whittier, all of which appear in “The Black Cottage.”

Frost employs specific botanical terms such as “sinus,” in “The Self-Seeker”; “whips and poles,” in “A Hundred Collars”; and “russet” in “After Apple-Picking.” In the poem “The Self-Seeker,” there are specific references to types of flowers using their common names, such as Ram's Horn, floating heart, and Purple Lady's Slipper.