1. Robert Frost 1874-1963 was a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize recited one of his poems at the JKF inauguration grew up in Lawrence, Massachusetts attended Dartmouth College supported his family with farming & teaching school moved his family to England in 1912 published in the US after a positive Amy Lowell review returned to the US in 1916 received more awards than any other 20 th century poet

2. “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost –page 706 blank verse – poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter (5 stressed syllables per line) What do lines 12-15 tell you about the relationship between the two neighbors?

3. What do lines 24-26 reveal about the speaker? Why do you think the speaker’s neighbor insists on maintaining the wall?

4. According to the speaker, what causes a wall to fall apart? What might that “something” be?

5. What might walls and fences symbolize in this poem?

6. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

7. allusion – a reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, or some other branch of culture What is the rhyme scheme?

8. The speaker suggests that beauty and goodness in nature and in human life are temporary and transient. All things in God’s creation fall from a state of perfection. In line 1, buds have a bright luster like gold, but the gold disappears as the bud matures.

9. In line 5, the speaker is referring to the first young shoots becoming mature leaves. Line 6 is an allusion to the Bible/Adam and Eve. It is alluding to the fall of Adam and Eve. This symbolizes a loss of innocence.