"SEA WAVES ARE GREEN AND WET / BUT UP FROM WHERE THEY DIE / RISE OTHERS VASTER YET…": FIRST TRADE EDITION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY ROBERT FROST TO HIS FRIEND, PROMINENT THEATER CRITIC WALTER P. EATON, WITH A LENGTHY FRAGMENT FROM HIS POEM "SAND DUNES"

FROST, Robert. New Hampshire. A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes. New York: Henry Holt, 1923. Octavo, original half green cloth, gold paper label, marbled endpapers, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First trade edition, inscribed and signed by Robert Frost on the verso of the frontispiece to his friend, famous New York theater critic Walter P. Eaton, with a lengthy fragment from the poem "Sand Dunes."

New Hampshire contains a number of Frost’s most famous poems—“Fire and Ice,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” With four woodcuts by J. J. Lankes. A signed limited edition was published simultaneously. Crane A6. This copy is inscribed from Robert Frost to his friend. The complete inscription reads: "Sand Dunes—Fragment. Sea waves are green and wet / But up from where they die / Rise others vaster yet / And those are brown and dry / They are the sea made land / To come at the fisher town / And bury in solid sand / The men she could not drown. Robert Frost. For his friend. Walter P. Eaton." Walter Prichard Eaton, to whom this copy was inscribed, was once described by scholar R.E. Rogers as "one of the best known dramatic critics of the theatre in America… between the years 1908 to 1910 [he] was perhaps the most independent and courageous man writing about the New York theatres." When Eaton was effectively frozen out of the theaters by theater managers, he moved to the Berkshires where he made a temporary career of writing novels and short pieces until the time became right for him to reestablish himself in New York. When it did, he immediately reentered the world of criticism. He wrote numerous books on theater, including The American Stage of To-Day (1908), At the New Theatre and Others (1910), Plays and Players (1916), The Actor's Heritage (1924), and The Theatre Guild: The First Ten Years (1929). In 1933, he accepted the post of Associate Professor of Playwriting at Yale. Today, much of Eaton's criticism is viewed as having a decidedly conservative bent. Eaton's correspondence with Frost often concerned literary matters. The poem "Sand Dunes" was originally published in West-Running Brook in 1928. The original poem has an additional two stanzas that follow the ones Frost has inscribed here. They read: "She may know cove and cape, / But she does not know mankind / If by any change of shape, / She hopes to cut off mind. / Men left her a ship to sink: / They can leave her a hut as well; / And be more free to think / For the one more cast-off shell."

Book fine, dust jacket extremely good with a few chips to spine ends and rear panel and light rubbing and mild toning to extremities. A handsome inscribed copy with excellent provenance.