Home Burial

“Home Burial” is a narrative poem written by Robert Frost and published in his second collection, North of Boston (1914). The book, dedicated to his wife Elinor Frost, is subtitled “This Book of People.” Unlike his first book, A Boy’s Will (1913), which centered on inner musings and observations of nature, North of Boston focuses on the inhabitants of New England, particularly the part of Massachusetts where the Frosts lived on a rural farm. 

One of the most famous poems from the collection, “Home Burial” focuses on the devastating effect that the death of a child has on a couple and the estrangement it causes between them. The work is not strictly autobiographical, but before its publication, Frost and Elinor did lose two children of their own—Elliot, who died in 1896 at the age of three, and Elinor Bettina, who lived for just one day in 1907. Frost depicted the complexities of such emotions in his work, including grief. 

This poem appeared early in Frost’s career and helped establish him as a poet of emotional insight and depth. He was known for his realistic depictions of life in poems that bridged 19th- and 20th-century styles. Frost wrote in metrical blank verse, a style from earlier poets, while employing modern techniques like relying on dialogue to tell the story. “Home Burial” is also unique in its depiction of tension over an intimate and domestic subject. 

Poet Biography

Robert Lee Frost was born to William Prescott Frost, a journalist and teacher, and Isabelle Moodie, in San Francisco, California, on March 26, 1874. William died when Frost was 11, and the family relocated to Lawrence, Massachusetts, to live with his paternal grandfather. Frost graduated high school in 1892, where he was honored as co-valedictorian with Elinor White. After he published his first poem in 1894 in the New York Independent, he proposed to Elinor, but she objected until she finished her college degree. They married after her graduation in 1895. Frost attended Dartmouth College but moved back home after a brief stay. He worked in a factory, as a cobbler, as an editor, and as a teacher.

In 1896, Frost and Elinor welcomed the first of their six children. Elliot would later die of typhoid fever at the age of three in 1900. Both Frost and Elinor suffered depression afterward. At this time, Frost went back to Harvard, where he pursued literature and the classics (See: Further Reading & Resources). Although he did not finish the degree, his education dramatically influenced his poetry, particularly its psychological complexities and style. Frost decided to then give poultry farming a try, so the family moved to Derry, New Hampshire.

Frost ultimately supplemented the family income with teaching because successful farming was tenuous. In 1912, he moved his family to live outside London, England, to further his career as a poet. A Boy’s Will, his first collection of poetry, was published the next year, and enjoyed success. During that time, Frost met several contemporary poets, including Ezra Pound and Edward Thomas, the latter of whom became one of Frost’s best friends. In 1914, Frost published his second book, North of Boston, again to great success. As World War I began, the Frosts returned to the United States, where Frost bought a New Hampshire farm (the later site of The Frost Place museum). In 1916, another collection about New England, Mountain Interval, was published.

The collection New Hampshire (1924) garnered Frost his first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, increasing his renown as an American poet. Frost maintained a steady life of giving lectures and teaching, particularly at Amherst College in Lowell, Massachusetts, and at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College in Vermont. By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in the United States due to his accessible artistry. Frost visited England and Paris in the late 1920s, and by the early 1930s published two collected works, Collected Poems (1930) and Collected Verse (1933) that each won the Pulitzer Prize.

However, the next two decades also brought Frost several devastating losses: His daughter Marjorie died in childbirth (1934), his wife died of heart failure (1938), and his son Carol died by suicide (1940). Although he continued to write and publish poetry in his later years, only The Witness Tree (1942) received the same critical acclaim as his earlier work, becoming his last work to win the Pulitzer Prize. 

Until his death at age 88, Frost focused on teaching and writing. He was the first poet to read at a presidential inauguration: John F. Kennedy’s in 1961. A year later, he received the Congressional Medal of Honor from Kennedy. On January 29, 1963, Frost died in Boston. He was buried in Vermont.

Poem Text

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs

Before she saw him. She was starting down,

Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.

She took a doubtful step and then undid it

To raise herself and look again. He spoke

Advancing toward her: ‘What is it you see

From up there always—for I want to know.’

She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,

And her face changed from terrified to dull.

He said to gain time: ‘What is it you see,’

Mounting until she cowered under him.

‘I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.’

She, in her place, refused him any help

With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.

She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see,

Blind creature; and awhile he didn’t see.

But at last he murmured, ‘Oh,’ and again, ‘Oh.’

‘What is it—what?’ she said.

                                   ‘Just that I see.’

‘You don’t,’ she challenged. ‘Tell me what it is.’

‘The wonder is I didn’t see at once.

I never noticed it from here before.

I must be wonted to it—that’s the reason.

The little graveyard where my people are!

So small the window frames the whole of it.

Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?

There are three stones of slate and one of marble,

Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight

On the sidehill. We haven’t to mind those.

But I understand: it is not the stones,

But the child’s mound—’

                          ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.

She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm

That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;

And turned on him with such a daunting look,

He said twice over before he knew himself:

‘Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?’

‘Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!

I must get out of here. I must get air.

I don’t know rightly whether any man can.’

‘Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.

Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs.’

He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.

‘There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.’

‘You don’t know how to ask it.’

                                           ‘Help me, then.’

Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

‘My words are nearly always an offense.

I don’t know how to speak of anything

So as to please you. But I might be taught

I should suppose. I can’t say I see how.

A man must partly give up being a man

With women-folk. We could have some arrangement

By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off

Anything special you’re a-mind to name.

Though I don’t like such things ’twixt those that love.

Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.

But two that do can’t live together with them.’

She moved the latch a little. ‘Don’t—don’t go.

Don’t carry it to someone else this time.

Tell me about it if it’s something human.

Let me into your grief. I’m not so much

Unlike other folks as your standing there

Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.

I do think, though, you overdo it a little.

What was it brought you up to think it the thing

To take your mother-loss of a first child

So inconsolably—in the face of love.

You’d think his memory might be satisfied—’

‘There you go sneering now!’

                                        ‘I’m not, I’m not!

You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.

God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,

A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.’

‘You can’t because you don't know how to speak.

If you had any feelings, you that dug

With your own hand—how could you?—his little grave;

I saw you from that very window there,

Making the gravel leap and leap in air,

Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly

And roll back down the mound beside the hole.

I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.

And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs

To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.

Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice

Out in the kitchen, and I don’t know why,

But I went near to see with my own eyes.

You could sit there with the stains on your shoes

Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave

And talk about your everyday concerns.

You had stood the spade up against the wall

Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.’

‘I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.

I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.’

‘I can repeat the very words you were saying:

“Three foggy mornings and one rainy day

Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.”

Think of it, talk like that at such a time!

What had how long it takes a birch to rot

To do with what was in the darkened parlor?

You couldn’t care! The nearest friends can go

With anyone to death, comes so far short

They might as well not try to go at all.

No, from the time when one is sick to death,

One is alone, and he dies more alone.

Friends make pretense of following to the grave,

But before one is in it, their minds are turned

And making the best of their way back to life

And living people, and things they understand.

But the world’s evil. I won’t have grief so

If I can change it. Oh, I won’t, I won’t!’

‘There, you have said it all and you feel better.

You won’t go now. You’re crying. Close the door.

The heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up.

Amy! There’s someone coming down the road!’

‘You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—

Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you—’

‘If—you—do!’ She was opening the door wider.

‘Where do you mean to go? First tell me that.

I’ll follow and bring you back by force. I will!—’

Frost, Robert. “Home Burial.” 1914. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

In a rural house, north of Boston, Massachusetts, sometime before 1914, a couple grieves the death of their young son. The action begins when the husband enters the house and sees his wife, Amy, descending the staircase. Not seeing him, she looks over her shoulder out the upstairs window, then pauses. The husband, noticing this as repeated behavior, asks about it. In response, Amy sinks onto the step with a blank expression. 

He takes the stairs up to her and realizes that the window looks out on the family cemetery, including their son’s fresh grave. He mentions this, but Amy refuses to talk about the son, her depression, or her husband's concerns. She avoids him, retreating down the stairs and moves to open the door. He asks her not to go and seek help from others but instead hopes she’ll talk to him. He suggests that he can avoid subjects that she doesn’t want to talk about but does assert that an intimate couple should be able to talk to each other. 

Although he offers to help her navigate her pain, he criticizes how intense Amy is with her grief, noting that other mothers have lost their first-born children and overcome the loss. He suggests that Amy’s all-consuming reaction might be an insult to the child’s memory. This upsets Amy who confesses that what she really can’t forget is that he dug their own child’s grave, and then, seemingly returned to the business of everyday life unaffected. She thinks he and other mourners have been callous. This makes her feel that her husband is a stranger to her and that, at large, “the world’s evil” (Line 110). She cannot grieve in this shallow manner. 

The husband thinks her passionate outburst might be a turning point with her finding some solace in crying it out. He then hears a person coming toward their house and urges her to shut the now open door. She chides him for caring what others think and repeats her need to leave. Frustrated, he threatens to follow her and bring her back home “by force” (Line 120). “Home Burial” concludes with an open ending that leaves the reader to wonder what Amy and her husband will do next.