![]() ![]() I look on all the reading you do in college-ten times as much a year as I do in ten years, and I’m a reader-I look on it as simply scansion. Rapid reading-I’m one of the rapidest of readers. Yes, sure accept the premises, always, as a gentleman. All my teaching days I’ve heard rapid reading advocated as if it were something to attain to. I myself have been bothered by certain things. You said, “Perhaps those other eggs were necessary in order to make the ocean a proper broth for the one to grow up in. ![]() And you said-what did you say? You found something to say, surely. One cod egg is all that survives of a million. You were confronted with facts of waste in nature. To you the cod was sacred and her eggs precious. You were a Bostonian and you had been brought up to worship the cod. But He made him out of prepared mud.” You still had your God, you see. But you found a way to say-either with presence of mind, wittily, or slowly with meditation-you found the way to say, “Sure, God probably didn’t make man out of mud. It was supposed to disturb you about your God. You were confronted with the facts of evolution. You came from the “Bible belt,” let’s say. You’ve been broadened and enlarged to where you can listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. Accept the premises-take it up where it’s given you and then show ’em what you can make of it. The formula would be something like this: always politely accept the other man’s premises. It’s given you, slowly, gradually, the means to deal with that sort of thing, not only in college but the rest of your life. Now, I think the College itself has given you one thing of importance I’d like to speak of. They like to tell you things that will disturb you. I’ve known teachers with a real hanker for ravishing innocence. And you brought it with an instinct, I hope, to keep it-not to have it taken away from you, not to have it tkaen away from you, not to be bamboozled out of it or scared out of it by any fancy teachers. I’ll make them short and easy for you to listen to.īut you came to college bringing with you something to go on with-that was the idea from my point of view: something to go on with. I usually am permitted to say a poem or two-am expected to. I thought I’d say to you just a few words about that, and so as to lead up to two or three poems of my own. And I ran away because I was more interested in education than anybody in the College at that time. You don’t know it, and I shouldn’t tell it perhaps, but I go every year, once a year, to touch Ledyard’s monument down there, as the patron saint of freshmen who run away. I’m one of the original members of the Outing Club-me and Ledyard. I’m rounding out something like sixty-three, isn’t it? But it is a real rounding out for me. This is a rounding out for you, and a rounding out is the main part of it. Was there ever a more subtly dark take on education? And can one ever truly finish his or her education? Finish growing in life? However, it is definitely of more interest to those entering their first or last year at Dartmouth and still have time to change-for those about to begin their education and for those about to finish theirs. For scale, statue is the size of a pickup truck.Editor’s Note: Robert Frost ’96 delivered this commencement address before the graduating Class of 1955. Statue of book on plaza of Dodd Center, University of Connecticut. Bring your students to a convenient stone wall, have them dwell on such themes, ask them to write, and see what happens. Stone walls give such folks their best opportunity to sense the presence of deep time. He believes that many New Englanders have a subconscious yearning to see the earth’s crust each day. Responsive Writing: Professor Thorson has suggested that “The soul of New England perches on a rock.” (Encyclopedia of New England, Yale Univ. Have your students read and discuss any of these poems. Other poems by Frost with stone wall themes include Ghost House and Star in a Stone Boat. His most famous poem, Mending Wall, is often required reading as soon as students are able to understand symbolism, metaphor, and myth. Robert Frost’s Mending Wall: Of all humanists to use New England’s stone walls as literary devices, the poet Robert Frost stands at the head of the pack. ![]() They convey a sense of material strength, cultural ruin, Yankee expedience, the depth of time, and of elemental simplicity. Stone walls are in the background for the New England literature, especially works by the Transcedentalists. My entry titled “geology covers many themes that tie regional culture to this subject. This is as true for children today as it was for the literary giants of New England culture.īACKGROUND A very good source book for New England culture. Robert Frost’s Mending Wall in Derry, NH. ![]()
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