The year is 2025. Robert Frost is about 150 years old. He sits down and shatters all of his vertebrae. With his frail hand, he drags a pen over paper, writing something new. “Nothing New” actually, and it is a short yet beautiful poem. He smiles at his handiwork and then takes a nap for the rest of the day. Everyone is left to wonder how this man is still alive.
Unfortunately, while this would be one of the strangest biological feats in human history, it is not true. The man has long been dead, since 1963. So what do I mean by all of this?
According to Jay Parini, the poem “Nothing New” was recently found inscribed inside a copy of Frost’s second collection, which is called “North of Boston,” in an “educator’s home library” by a friend after the educator had passed away. How lucky! After being found, it was first published in two Feb. 2025 issues of The New Yorker. Not many poems by such famous poets have been published over 100 years after being written, and this poem was written in 1918.
For those who enjoy reading Frost, something that is apparent throughout his work is his simple, conversational tone. That is part of what made him so engaging with his American audience. Much of what he wrote is very memorable, very quotable — it persists. This poem is from a time in his life when he enjoyed brevity. It only has eight lines, but does just enough in that little bit of space. The rhyme scheme in the first half is rather solidified, AABA, but it gets a bit funky in the second half, BCAB. Together, that is AABABCAB — peculiar but not absurd, when it comes to rhyme schemes. His playfulness with the rhyme ties into his less strict, less formal tone. He talks about “when the dust to-day / Against my face was turned to spray,” followed by “the winter dream again” when he was “young at play,” emphasizing the passage of time. Despite the differences of his current state and that of when he was a kid at play, he states that he is “not more sad than then” which subverts the expectation of the poem. It seems a bit dreary, no? But look, he explains that he has come to terms with this passage of time, emphasizing that it is “nothing new” and that he is not more sad. Still, here, he states “I am further upon my way / The same dream again,” describing his life as some sort of way or path that he has been traveling upon — many people, at this point, might recall a particular famous poem of his. He ends this poem memorializing his life as some sort of dream that he has tread out upon, imbuing the poem with a dreamy or mysterious sense of life itself. Perhaps he is also saying that, though he has grown up, he is, in some ways, still the young child at play.
Though this poem was not written near the end of his life, it was published long after his death. It stands as a reminder that change itself is nothing new, but we should not evolve out of our innocence and young bliss. It also shows the impact that one poet can have on the American landscape, because though he is not still here with us, his work continues to touch the hearts of people around the world.
The poet wakes up from his nap and remembers the poem he had just written. With every ounce of strength in his body, he writes out one last note, finally accepting his death after 150 years on this Earth. The workers come by and find him lifeless. In his cold hands, he holds a paper that has written on it the following:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Caidan Pilarski is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at cpilarski@cornellsun.com.
