The voice of the frost in Mending Wall, after the apple harvest and the woodpile The narratives of the "characters" from the book - "Mending Wall" , “ After Apple-Pile” and “The Wood-Pile” also strive for inclusiveness, although they are spoken by a voice we are tempted to call “Frost.” This voice has no particular background identity, nor is it obsessed or limited in its point of view; rather, he seems to explore nature, other people, ideas, ways of saying things, for the sheer enjoyment they can provide. Unlike poems like "Home Burial" and "A Servant to Servants," which lean towards the tragic or pathetic, nothing "terrible" happens in the personal narratives, nor is there any disturbing secret hidden behind them. In "The Woodpile", for example, almost nothing happens; his story, his idea or wisdom achieved, the whole air with which he carries himself, is not at all memorable. A man walking through a frozen swamp decides to turn back, then decides instead to go farther and see what will happen. He notices a bird in front of him and spends some time thinking about what it is thinking, then sees it settle behind a pile of wood. The pile is described in a way that highlights the fact that it has been around for some time. With a reflection on who left it there, "far from a useful fireplace", the poem concludes. And the reader looks up from the text, wonders if he missed something, maybe goes back and rereads it to see if he can grasp some meaning that he missed. But "The Woodpile" remains stubbornly inflexible in the face of any attempt to plunder it in search of a meaning that is not evidently on the surface. This surface is busy, like when the speaker meets the bird:A little bird flew well..... . means of paper ...being like this, when he does not have an audience to intimidate or flatter, when he is free, and the word takes one form and no other." Despite the presence of characters and scenes from the hinterland this "book of people ", it is like a book of sentences that actually exists, like a triumphant vindication of the poetic theory that Frost had designed and like a monument to what could be achieved by trusting in the delivery of speech. . At the end of "Home Burial", the wife she lashes out in exasperation at her husband, “You – oh, you think that’s all the talk. . ." But for the composer of these poems, speech is everything, both that of his imaginary characters and that of himself speaking aloud. Works Cited Frost, Robert. "Mending Wall." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Julia Reidhead. 5th ed. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 1998. Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered.