ROBERT FROST:

“... he has come home to die:

You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time.”

“Home,” he mocked gently.

STEVE EMBER: She answers:

ROBERT FROST:

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in.”

STEVE EMBER: Without ever having Silas speak, Frost has made the reader know this tired old man, who has come to die in the only home he has. In the final lines of the poem the story of Silas is completed. Mary says:

ROBERT FROST:

Warren returned -- too soon, it seemed to her --

Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.

“Warren?” she questioned.

“Dead,” was all he answered.

STEVE EMBER: The poem tells of the understanding that Mary and Warren have for a man who has worked for them for many years. The poem also presents a sadness that Frost repeats many times.

(MUSIC)

FAITH LAPIDUS: Robert Frost was like an earlier New England writer and thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson. They never were good at joining others in programs or movements. Frost was politically conservative and avoided movements of the left or right. He did this not because he did not support their beliefs, but because they were group projects.

In the poem "Mending Wall" the speaker and his neighbor walk together along a wall, repairing the damage caused by winter weather: