On this day in 1894 twenty-year-old Robert Frost departed for the Dismal Swamp on the Virginia-North Carolina border, with Dark Thoughts. He was poor, jobless, unpublished, expelled from Dartmouth College and, pretty much for all of the above reasons, recently spurned by his high school sweetheart and chosen mate, Elinor White. Frost had just returned from a visiting White at Lawrence College, made unannounced but bearing gifts: the two homemade copies of his first, five-poem book of poetry, Twilight. White barely opened her door far enough to receive her copy; Frost tore his to pieces as he walked away ... FULL STORY »
