January 02, 2008	Wednesday	Zilhaj 22, 1428

RIPTON, Jan 1: A former home of poet Robert Frost has been vandalised, with intruders destroying dozens of items and setting fire to furniture in what police say was an underage-drinking party.

Homer Noble Farm was ransacked late on Friday night during a party attended by as many as 50 people, Sgt. Lee Hodsden said on Monday.

The intruders broke a window to get into the two-story wood frame building – a furnished residence open in the summer – before destroying tables and chairs, pictures, windows, light fixtures, and dishes. Wicker furniture and dressers were smashed and thrown into a fireplace and burned, apparently to provide heat in the unheated building, he said.

Empty beer bottles and cans, plastic cups, and cellophane apparently used to hold marijuana were also found, according to Hodsden. The vandals vomited in the living room and discharged two fire extinguishers inside the building, on a dead-end road.

A cabin on the property where Frost is said to have done some of his writing was untouched.

No arrests have been made, Hodsden said, adding that they have tracked down some partygoers and believe they are minors.

The damage was discovered on Saturday by a hiker who notified police at Middlebury College, which maintains the site. The property’s caretaker was last there at 10am on Friday, police said.

Frost, a celebrated New England poet known for such verse as “The Road Not Taken” and “The Gift Outright,” died in 1963. He summered at the home from 1939 to 1963.—AP