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"For Once, Then, Something" (1920) is the only poem Robert Frost ever composed in a classical meter: it is written in phalaecean hendecasyllabics. What led him to depart, in that single instance, from his declared commitment to native English meters? So far no scholar or critic has ventured to say. This paper offers an explanation, and points to a greater subtlety in Frost's engagement with Latin poetry than is usually proposed. Frost's poem is, among other things, a response to hostile critics. Scholars of Catullus - and Catullus was Frost's favorite Roman author - have pointed to a link between hendecasyllabics and the poetic mode of rebuttal to one's critics. That poets in the English tradition understood this link can be demonstrated by adducing two hendecasyllabic poems of Tennyson's: "Hendecasyllabics" (1863), in which the poet fires back at his magazine reviewers, and "The Gentle Life" (1870), in which he attacks his leading critic. An ardent admirer of Catullus, Tennyson naturally turned to the hendecasyllabic as the appropriate vehicle for such a response. I argue that by casting his own retort in hendecasyllabics, and by emulating other stylistic features in Catullus' hendecasyllabics, Frost places himself within this tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]