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Courage, says Frost, is the human vir tue that counts most—courage to act on limited knowledge, courage to make the best of what is here and not whine for more: "Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better." Frost is something of a philosophical an archist. Liberals and reformers move him to sly mirth. He has no confidence that the earth can be improved through social action or scientific gimcrackery: "One can safely say after from six to thirty thou sand years of experience that the evident design is a situation here in which it will always be about equally hard to save your soul. Whatever progress may be taken to mean, it can't mean making the world any easier a place in which to save your soul."
In a world where much is unknowable, Frost takes refuge in what is knowable, matter-of-fact and practical. "It's knowing what to do with things that counts." One of his favorite books is Robinson Crusoe : "I never tire of being shown how the limited can make snug in the limit less." For himself, Frost asks a wall against intrusion of knowledge, or people, a fence "between too much and me." What is beyond those fences, says Frost, is no man's business. It is "the canyon of Ceasing to Question What Doesn't Concern Us."
On its least terms, this may seem like planning small, keeping your socks dry, and bowing to superior wisdom. At its broadest, it may be taken as sound sense for an age bewildered by knowing less & less about more & more: "We are too much out, and if we don't draw in/ We shall be driven in."
Robert Frost has had more need than most men to draw in. Of the tragic deaths and illnesses in his family, the most crushing was the death of his wife in 1938. The shock to Frost was so great that he took to his bed with pneumonia. But he pulled through. Restored to his tough humor, when he underwent an operation for hemorrhoids he issued a bulletin: "I am resting on my laurels after an operation for asteroids."
These days he makes his winter headquarters in Cambridge, travels a regular winter circuit of colleges, lecturing (fee: $200-$300) and reading his poems (in a voice Padraic Colum once likened to the barking of an eagle), spends a couple of months in Florida where he has a small house in Coral Gables, summers at his Vermont farm, which he shares with the Morrison family: Harvard Lecturer (and poet) Theodore Morrison* and his wife Kathleen. Both at Cambridge and Ripton, "K," serves as a sort of combined secretary, manager and friend, handles Frost's correspondence, types his poems, fends off unwanted callers, fusses over his diet and clothes, tries to see that he gets to bed at a reasonable hour.
All summer long, there is a steady stream of friends visiting at the farm. Frost receives them slumped in the ancient Morris chair he bought 40 years ago, talking in his twanging New England voice, a rascally twinkle in his blue eyes. When the Morrisons are there, Frost takes his meals with them at the main house 50 yards down the hill from his cabin.