The poem 'Brown's Descent' also known by the name 'The Willy-Nilly Slide' is written in the ballad form and appeared in 'Mountain Interval' (1916). In this poem Frost has drawn an unforgettable character in unmistakable terms.
The World Is Too Much With Us is a sonnet by William Wordsworth is about the loss of nature caused by humankind. People are busy on getting and spending. For the speaker, we waste our powers for nothingness. For us, nature is little and incomplete, People have given their hearts away. This is a sordid boon. As the speaker feels, the sea is in close relation to the moon and the winds will be howling at all hours. But people are out of such tune.
The Wood Pile appeared in 'North of Boston'. It is written in blank verse. In it the poet keeps close to his experience and states what he actually observes. The poet takes a walk in the frozen swamp one day. During the walk he comes across two things: a small bird, and the woodpile. The entire poem centers on these two objects of observation.
One of the early lyrics of Frost, Reluctance is quite representative of the poets wistful melancholy and a sense of isolation. It was written in 1912 and was published in A Boy's Will in England. It is a characteristic poem by Frost.
One of the most difficult poems, Design, an Italian sonnet by Robert Frost was published in 'A Further Range' in 1936. The sonnet is the expression of the poet's surprise over the mysterious existence of the world surrounded by omens and evil designs. According to a critic, ‘this is a poem of finding evil in innocence, a song of experience, though the voice is hardly that of Blake's childlike singer.'
Mowing is one of the finest lyrics included in the volume 'A Boy's Will' (1913). The sonnet may be summed up in a single sentence; 'The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows'. It was written in the year of its appearance.
This blank-verse lyric Birches was published in 'Mountain Interval' in 1916. As a boy, the poet was much interested in climbing birch trees, swinging from the tops, till the supple branches bent down to the ground.
Edwin Arlington Robinson's Miniver Cheevy is a narrative poem of thirty two lines first published in 1910 in 'The Town Down the River'. Robinson analyzes the modernist tendency of nostalgia through the medium of his character Miniver Cheevy. Miniver Cheevy spends his time thinking what would have happened to him if he was born in the earlier period.
Pied Beauty is a curtal sonnet by Gerald Manley Hopkins published posthumously in 1918 though written in 1877. Though most of the Victorian poets deal with the theme of frustration, anxiety, decay, loss of human values and faith, Gerard Manley Hopkins is the only one poet who finds hope in God. So, human faith and god's grandeur are the common themes of his writing.
Thomas Hardy composed the poem 'The Darkling Thrush' at the juncture of Victorian and modern period in 1899 and published in 1900. It was originally titled as By the Century’s Deathbed, 1900. As his poem is written on the cusp of the New Year, we can find the reflection on the past events and his feelings about the future.