A-Z Blogging Challenge "F"

Hi and welcome to my site! 

As a very young girl I lived with my paternal grandmother for three formative years. Being an enthusiastic teacher and lover of words, she invariably had quotations written all over the house... literally. On the backs of cupboard doors, on calendars, napkins or wherever she happened to be.  With this in mind I am finding the authors, in alphabetical sequence, of many of her favorite quotations and am adding some of those that are special to my family as well.  Hope you enjoy!

              "F"

 Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. One of the most popular and critically respected American poets of his generation, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four  Four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

Living,as I do,on  the East Coast (of Canada) I feel a special affinity with the works of Robert Frost. This particular poem is also special to both of  our daughters. Our second daughter quoted this piece to justify her decision to choose a  High School that was different than the one "the rest of us" had chosen. ( the first two stanzas) then this same poem was read to her  on her wedding day, by our first daughter, with  emphasis on the last two lines.

The Road Not Taken

A young R.Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost
Mountain Interval
1916

I would be terribly remiss in my effort to pay tribute to the "sayings" that my grandmother cherished, if I did not include this short quotation. It is one of many that  she penned in an "autograph book"  that she gave as a gift to my father in 1961.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.

Sam Walter Foss

Birthplace of Sam Foss in Candia, New Hampshire: the original "House by the Side of the Road"