You Come Too by Robert Frost
"You Come Too" by Robert Frost is a celebrated anthology of fifty-one poems that targets young readers while also appealing to a broader audience. The collection is organized thematically, with each section titled after a line from one of the poems, allowing readers to navigate through diverse subjects—from the joys of nature to deeper contemplations on human emotions. Illustrations by Thomas W. Nason complement the text, enhancing the visual experience of the poems.
Among the featured works are well-known pieces such as "The Pasture," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," and "The Road Not Taken," along with lesser-known selections like "Good Hours" and "The Telephone." Frost's use of varied poetic forms—lyric, narrative, blank verse, and structured rhyme—demonstrates his versatility and invites readers to engage with different styles. Some poems are specifically aimed at children, making the collection accessible to younger audiences while retaining themes that resonate across ages.
Critical to its ongoing popularity, Frost's involvement in curating the anthology ensures a thoughtful selection that continues to be a standard reference for young readers exploring poetry. The book's enduring appeal is evidenced by subsequent collections and adaptations of Frost's work, solidifying its place in children's literature.
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Subject Terms
You Come Too by Robert Frost
First published: 1959; illustrated
Subjects: Animals, emotions, friendship, jobs and work, and nature
Type of work: Poetry
Recommended Ages: 13-18
Form and Content
The fifty-one poems in Robert Frost’s You Come Too: Favorite Poems for Young Readers are organized into sections according to subject, each section titled with a line from one of the poems that follow. The first grouping, for example, is titled “I’m going out . . . ” (from “The Pasture”) and contains poems about walking out of doors. The poems in this section concern the same general subject; however, they represent a variety of specific themes, from simple delight in farm scenes in “The Pasture” to complex considerations of loneliness in “Acquainted with the Night.”
The title page for each section includes an original wood engraving illustration by Thomas W. Nason, and fourteen additional Nason engravings appear on the cover and throughout the book. A foreword by Frost’s friend Hyde Cox introduces the poems and provides young people with sensible suggestions about reading poems.
You Come Too contains representative selections of Frost’s poems. It includes many of the commonly anthologized pieces, such as “The Pasture,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and “The Road Not Taken,” as well as less well known poems. Among these are “Good Hours,” in which an alienated speaker seems shut out of the warm homes he walks by, and “The Telephone,” in which the speaker fancies that he hears a loved one calling him from a flower.
The collection contains lyric poems such as “A Patch of Old Snow,” “The Oven Bird,” and “The Freedom of the Moon,” as well as narrative poems, including the comical “Brown’s Decent” and the contemplative “Death of the Hired Man.” It includes blank verse as in “Christmas Trees,” complicated or experimental rhyme and other sound effects as in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and easy aabb rhymes as in “Looking for the Sunset Bird in Winter”—although fewer than one might expect.
A few of the poems seem intended specifically for children and young adults. “The Exposed Nest” is addressed to a young reader, a child who has discovered a full nest of birds on the ground revealed and left vulnerable by a mowing machine. One section takes its title, “I was one of the children told . . . ,” from “A Peck of Gold,” in which the speaker is a child. Other poems in the section include “The Last Word of a Bluebird: As Told to a Child” and “A Girl’s Garden.” Most of the other poems (and perhaps even these) are written to a broad audience of young and old alike by a poet wise in years but young at heart.
Critical Context
That Robert Frost participated in the selection of the poems commends You Come Too, which is still widely available in libraries. The continuing popularity of Frost’s poetry among children and young adults is suggested by Henry Holt’s publication of two subsequent collections in their Books for Young Readers series: Birches (1988) and Christmas Trees (1990).
Among more recent collections of Frost’s poems, one of the best is Poetry for Young People: Robert Frost (1994), edited by Gary D. Schmidt with watercolor illustrations by Henri Sorenson. The poems are organized by seasons, and almost half of them are among those found in You Come Too. This collection also includes a biographical-critical essay on Frost and New England life, as well as a few brief helpful notes on the poems. A discussion of books of Frost’s poems for young readers would be incomplete without mentioning Susan Jeffers’ beautifully illustrated Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1978). Nevertheless, You Come Too remains the standard collection of Frost’s poems for children and young adults.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Robert Frost. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003.
Burnshaw, Stanley. Robert Frost Himself. New York: George Braziller, 1986.
Faggen, Robert. Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
Galbraith, Astrid. New England as Poetic Landscape: Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost. New York: Peter Lang, 2003.
Gerber, Philip L. Robert Frost. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1982.
Lathem, Edward Connery. Robert Frost: A Biography. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Robert Frost: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.
Poirier, Richard. Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Potter, James L. The Robert Frost Handbook. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980.
Pritchard, William H. Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Thompson, Lawrance Roger, and R. H. Winnick. Robert Frost: A Biography. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982.