FDP - Robert Frost

FDP - Robert Frost
Excerpt:
Frost was devastated when he received news of Thomas's death. In his letter to Helen Thomas he wrote: "He was the bravest and best and dearest man you and I have ever known. I knew from the moment when I first met him at his unhappiest that he would some day clear his mind and save his life. I have had four wonderful years with him. . . . I want to see him to tell him something. I want to tell him, what I think he liked to hear from me, that he was a poet. . . . I had meant to talk endlessly with him still, either here in our mountains as we had said or, as I found my longing was more and more, there at Leddington where we first talked of war."
A poem emerged from Frost's grief, titled 'To Edward Thomas', but later appearing as 'To E.T.' It was first published in The Yale Review in April 1920. He hesitated about publishing it, and wrote to a colleague in July 1919 to explain why: "Edward Thomas was the closest friend I ever had and I was the closest friend he ever had; and this was something I didn't wait to realize after he had died...