Grave of a Famous Person: Robert Lee Frost - Bennington, VT

Robert Lee Frost

Bennington, VT

N 42° 53.003 W 073° 12.688

Short Description: 

The grave of American poet Robert Lee Frost is located in Old Bennington Cemetery, Bennington, VT.

Long Description:

The family grave of Robert Lee Frost is marked by a 10' long by 4' wide ground level grave marker fringed with a relief of laurel leaves. The grave stone is inscribed with the names and dates of Robert Lee Frost, his wife Elinor Miriam White, four of his children Marjorie Frost Fraser, Carol Frost, Elliot Frost, Elinor Bettina Frost, and his daughter-in-law Lillian LaBatt Frost. His other two daughters, Lesley and Irma, were still alive when he died.

His inscription is:

ROBERT LEE FROST 

MAR. 26, 1874 - JAN. 29, 1963

"I HAD A LOVER'S QUARREL WITH THE WORLD."

He compose his own epitaph. It appears in the last stanza of his poem "A Lesson For Today."

I hold your doctrine of Memento Mori.
And were an epitaph to be my story
I’d have a short one ready for my own.
I would have written of me on my stone:
I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California on March 26, 1874. In 1885, his family moved to Lawrence, MA and he later attended Dartmouth College in NH and Harvard University in MA. He went to England and there his first two volumes of poems were published: A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914). At the start of World War I he returned to a family farm in Franconia, NH, where he wrote, taught and lectured. From 1916–20, 1923–24, and 1927–1938 he was a professor of English at Amherst College, MA. New Hampshire: A Poem With Notes and Grace Notes, 1931 for Collected Poems, 1937 for A Further Range, and 1943 for A Witness Tree.

In 1960, he received the United States Congressional Gold Medal: "In recognition of his poetry which enabled the culture of the United States and the philosophy of the world." In 1960, he received the United States Congressional Gold Medal: "In recognition of his poetry which enabled the culture of the United States and the philosophy of the world."