Here come the line-gang pioneering by.
They throw a forest down less cut than broken.
They plant dead trees for living, and the dead
They string together with a living thread.
They string an instrument against the sky
Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken
Will run as hushed as when they were a thought
But in no hush they string it: they go past
With shouts afar to pull the cable taut,
To hold it hard until they make it fast,
To ease away—they have it. With a laugh,
An oath of towns that set the wild at naught
They bring the telephone and telegraph.
Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, Calif. By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new collection, his fame and honors—including four Pulitzer Prizes—increased. Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963.
