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Robert FrostA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The concept for the poem originated from a traumatic incident in Frost’s early childhood, when he was five or six years old. As an adult, Frost shared the story with several people. Although the versions differ slightly in their details, the core narrative is consistent. Here, Frost recounts what happened to his friend, Louis Mertins:
I was very small and impressionable—a child full of imagination and phobias. I watched the big waves coming in, blown by the wind. I recall that I was playing on the sand with a long black seaweed, using it for a whip. The sky must have clouded up, and night began to come on. The sea seemed to rise up and threaten me. I got scared, imagining that my mother and father, who were somewhere about, had gone away and left me by myself in danger of my life. I was all alone with the ocean water rising higher and higher. I was fascinated and terrorized watching the sea; for it came to me that we were all doomed to be engulfed and swept away. Long years after I remembered the occasion vividly, the feeling which overwhelmed me, and wrote my poem, “Once by the Pacific” (Quoted in Holland, Norman N.
By Robert Frost
Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost
After Apple-Picking
Robert Frost
A Time To Talk
Robert Frost
Birches
Robert Frost
Dust of Snow
Robert Frost
Fire and Ice
Robert Frost
Mending Wall
Robert Frost
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
October
Robert Frost
Out, Out—
Robert Frost
Putting in the Seed
Robert Frost
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Robert Frost
The Death of the Hired Man
Robert Frost
The Gift Outright
Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
West-Running Brook
Robert Frost