Robert Frost Poem Rediscovered

The great thing about archival work is there's always one more page to turn over.

For graduate student Robert Stilling, finding a handwritten Robert Frost poem on the opening pages of a leatherbound book was the discovery of a lifetime, reports CBS News correspondent Russ Mitchell.

"I didn't recognize it at all," Stilling, a graduate student at the University of Virginia, told Mitchell. "But at the time I didn't have, and still don't have, encyclopedic knowledge of all of Frost's work. So I had to do a little more research, a little more digging to find out if this thing had ever surfaced before."

Stilling knew the 1918 poem, "War Thoughts at Home," existed — he found clues about it in letters from an editor who corresponded with Frost that hinted about an unpublished poem. He searched dozens of books and discovered it in this copy of Frost's book "North of Boston" at a library at the University of Virginia.

In 35 lines, Frost tells the story of a woman at home on a winter afternoon during World War I.

"It begins with a sense that something might be wrong in the world," Stilling said about the poem.

"You immediately hear some sounds outside the window of the house — 'A flurry of bird war,' as Frost puts it," he said. "Some voice in the poem is thinking about those birds in a war trying to escape".

The poem has special meaning today — with Americans once again fighting in a war overseas.

"Frost was trying to get inside, or show, or portray those left at home, and it draws attention that the war doesn't just exist over in France," said Stilling. "For us now, those absences resonate — and the absences that are too hard to think about especially with a war going on."

Frost may have been inspired by personal loss. Stilling believes the woman in the poem was Helen Thomas, the wife of Frost's long-time friend British poet Edward Thomas, who enlisted in the army and often wrote letters from the frontlines. He was killed in combat in 1917.

"Here is someone really thinking about war," recalled Stilling. "Here's someone thinking about conflict — the larger issues of conflict, human conflict."

While Stilling says he's thrilled to have unearthed a Frost treasure, he believes there are many discoveries to be made of poets who are writing about the world we live in today.

"There are a lot of great poets writing now that we should go and discover," said Stilling. "Let's go look at the people writing in America now who are inspired by Frost."