All The Difference

I read Robert Frost. I come back to him time and time again. He seems to understand pain, mystery, beauty, and loss. He embraces tradition, masculinity, and hard work.

Critics have variously labeled Frost as a rustic New Englander echoing worn out platitudes, a Darwinist preaching modernism, or a devoted disciple of Henri Bergson who embraces Creative Evolution.

In his fascinating new book on Robert Frost, Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher, Peter J. Stanlis argues that Frost, toward the end of his life, came to believe in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Stanlis writes, "Frost identified his religious ‘orthodoxy’ as affirmed in the central doctrine of all branches of Christianity—the Incarnation of Christ—the substantiation of God’s spirit put into human flesh. . . . Frost left no doubt that his emblematic passage on transubstantiation, a crucial doctrine in orthodox Christianity, corresponded with his own religious beliefs."

Stanlis points to the last letter Frost ever wrote, dictated from his death bed to one of his closest friends:

Why will the quidnuncs [know-it-alls] always be hoping for a salvation man will never have from anyone but God? I was just saying today how Christ posed Himself the whole problem and died for it. How can we be just in a world that needs mercy and merciful in a world that needs justice. . . . It seems as if I never wrote these plunges into the depths to anyone but you. . . . If only I get well. . . I’ll go deeper into my life with you than I ever have before.

Frost didn't get well. I hope that, in the end, one of my favorite poets chose the road “less traveled.” It makes all the difference.