by Avery Cloward

Created on: September 15, 2008   Last Updated: September 16, 2008

I flipped through the pages tiredly, my mind already bored with the encyclopedia's contents. And who said reading encyclopedias was fun?

Then, I saw it. Just a glimpse, but it stood out so clearly that I just had to retrace my hasty steps and find it again. There it was. The picture was old, all in black and white, but the character hidden beneath that flimsy paper covering seemed to bound out of the picture.

A sweet yet slightly jocular looking old man smiled at me from the photo, his arm rested easily on a fence planted in front of a small cottage. His face looked genuinely relaxed, completely void of the tenseness that seems to overpopulate the world today. Long wrinkles streamed from the end of his eyes like tear trails leading to his temples, but they did not hinder the smile that caused them. A nice smile he had, too. A smile that seemed to invite you into the house he stood in front of for a cup of nice, sweet hot chocolate and a story by the fireplace. A sweet, welcoming smile.

His weather-beaten face proved many long years of experience and integrity, choices and dashed hopes, trials and tests, victories and defeats. Despite the years that seemed to grow on him like creepers on a garden wall, he still looked young and kind.

He had a crown of snowy white threads atop his head, and his eyes possessed a soft twinkle that seemed to twinkle right out of the photograph and into the dark night sky to sparkle and shine with the stars that lived on that black carpet of air.

Yes, that was Robert Frost.

Why did America so absolutely love Robert Frost? What magic thread had he spun to make the fabric of his poems so alive, so tangible? What love did he possess that caused him to remarked admiringly about across the country? Why was... no, I'll change that. Why is a Robert Frost so liked?

Let's take a look at his character first of all: he was smart. He was the valedictorian of his class as a young man, and many remarked he showed great talent with writing at an early age. With his knowledge came wit, and that was loved by all who had the privilege to know him. He was nice and easy-going, and made friends almost everywhere he went. He was just plain funny, too.

Think about it: who could not like a man who, when he and his wife were torn between the choice of traveling to England or Vancouver, tossed a coin and completely trusted it to make the right decision for him?

Robert Frost knew how to get to people's hearts, deep down there. He knew that most people longed "to stop

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