Books: Hardy Perennial

STEEPLE BUSH (62 pp.)—Robert Frost —Henry Holt ($2.50).

Robert Lee Frost is the dean of living U.S. poets by virtue of both age and achievement. At 72, the four-time Pulitzer Prizewinner has lost little of his craftsmanship and none of his crackling vigor. But what was once only granitic Yankee individualism in his work has hardened into bitter and often uninspired Tory social commentary. The 43 poems of Steeple Bush do nothing to enlarge his greatness and no one of them could begin to displace the best of his Collected Poems. But devoted Frost readers will recognize an old familiar voice in such occasional, uncluttered lyrics as Bravado:

Have I not walked without an upward

look

Of caution under stars that very well

Might not have missed me when they

shot and fell?

It was a risk I had to take—and took.

For the rest, they will prefer to remember the younger Frost, who wrote:

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.