Places: North of Boston

First published: 1914

Type of work: Poetry

Asterisk denotes entries on real places.

Places DiscussedLunenburg

Lunenburg. North of BostonSmall Vermont township, appearing in “The Mountain,” that is made up of farms scattered around the foot of Mount Hor, near the western New Hampshire border town of Lancaster. The mountain’s name alludes to the biblical Mount Hor, and Frost may have intended the reader to associate the present mountain’s remote summit with the tops of Mount Hor and Mount Sinai, where God spoke to Aaron and Moses. In the poem, however, the man with the oxcart, to whom the narrator speaks, is uncertain of the mountain’s name. In any event the allusion is ironic, since neither the narrator nor the oxcart driver has been to the mountain’s top.

*New Hampshire

*New Hampshire. New England state containing the small towns Lancaster, Woodsville Junction, and Bow, mentioned in “A Hundred Collars.” Lancaster, near the Vermont border, in the northern part of the state, is the hometown of Dr. Magoon, a professor who is returning to town. Traveling by train, he stays in the hotel in Woodsville Junction (present-day Woodsville), where he shares a room with Lafe, a large, talkative man who drives around the countryside collecting for the Bow Weekly News. Bow, located about ten miles south of Concord, is the scene of the Stark family reunion in “The Generations of Men.”

*Lake Willoughby

*Lake Willoughby. Large body of water in the northeastern corner of Vermont that is the setting of “A Servant to Servants.” The lake’s isolation and natural beauty provide an objective correlative for the woman speaker’s fears that her loneliness and overwork have made her vulnerable to the insanity that runs in her family.

Bibliography

Brower, Reuben A. The Poetry of Robert Frost: Constellations of Intentions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1963. Compares Frost’s poems with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s and William Wordsworth’s. Examines prosody and themes.Lynen, John F. The Pastoral Art of Robert Frost. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1960. Important examination of Frost as an artist. Discusses adaptations of the pastoral for use in modern poetry.Poirier, Richard. Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Reevaluates many of Frost’s standards and finds them lacking. Ardent reexamination and reemphasis of Frost’s status as a major poet.Pritchard, William H. Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Examines the life through the poems. Balanced, fair appraisal. Shows how inseparable the man and his work were.Tharpe, Jac, ed. Frost: Centennial Essays. 3 vols. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1974-1978. Seventy-six essays on various topics, from analysis and explication to biography.