SOURCE: Monteiro, George. “Redemption Through Nature: A Recurring Theme in Thoreau, Frost and Richard Wilbur.” American Quarterly 20, no. 4 (winter 1968): 795-809.

In the following essay, the author compares Wilbur's use of nature imagery with that of Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost.

When Amherst College presented Frost with his twenty-first honorary degree in 1948, the poet was cited for having “taught generations of Amherst students that for gaining an insight into life, a metaphor is a sharper and brighter instrument than a syllogism.”¹ This remark was meant to characterize the poet, as well as the teacher that Frost, try as he might, could never cease being. But the remark could have been made, and undoubtedly was made in some form or other, about other native poets: Emerson, for one, whose work, especially his finest essays and lectures, overwhelmed its audience by metaphor and image but spurned logic; and for another...