Robert Frost, romantic - poet

Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 1996 by Sheldon W. Liebman

Sometimes, of course, the "glimpse" is so brief as to seem inconsequential or even questionable, as in "For Once, Then, Something." There can be little doubt, however, that the clock of "Acquainted with the Night" is really only the dark side of the moon of "Moon Compasses," in which the heavenly body "exalts" a mountain in the way that loving hands embrace a face (393). And the stars in Frost's poetry are not always signs of cosmic meaninglessness, as they are in "Stars" and "Bond and Free." They are also, in "Take Something like a Star," images of steadfastness and dependability and, in "I Will Sing You One-O," intimations of eternity, "Beyond which God is" (265). Similarly, the mowed fields that signify a change of seasons are not merely indications that the pleasures of summer are gone and the sorrows of autumn are imminent. In "The Last Mowing" and "The Tuft of Flowers," they are also occasions for communions with those who are either present to share in the tumultuousness of flowers, when "The place for the moment is ours" (338), or, though absent, nevertheless able to send "a message from the dawn" and induce a feeling of brotherhood (32).

Frost offers a similar view of man and nature in three visionary poems: "Going for Water," "Two Look at Two," and "Iris by Night." The speaker in the first poem sets out with his companion to fill a pail with water from the brook in the midst of the woods. The two first hear the musical notes of the brook and then see moonlit "drops . . . on the pool," which look like pearls, and a sliver of moonlight running across the brook, which looks like "a silver blade" (26). In this poem, the momentary union of heaven and earth (represented by the light of the moon hitting the surface of the water) is not regretted because of its brevity, but celebrated, as if it were meaningful and even miraculous. Another night journey into the woods in "Two Look at Two" begins with a characteristically Frostian lament as the two travelers prepare to abandon their walk: "This is all" (282). Yet suddenly a doe appears, unfrightened by their presence and willing to remain. Clearly the travelers' mood is full of awe at the sight. "This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?" they either think or say - as if the "all" meant "everything." Finally, they see a buck that similarly stays for a moment. "This must be all," they conclude. And the narrator comments: "It was all. Still they stood / A great wave from it going over them, / As if the earth in one unlooked-for favor / Had made them certain earth returned their love" (283). The final four lines of the poem serve as the culmination of a gradually escalating emotion that begins as disappointment and ends as rapture. Indeed, the narrator twice verifies the couple's perception of the event: first, by echoing their statement that the experience was "all" and, second, by confirming their sense that they have received an "unlooked-for favor."

In "Iris by Night," Frost describes another evening walk, this time down a mountainside. The hikers, acting as "one another's guide," first grope through the darkness and then come upon "a moment of confusing lights," which Frost compares to the moment before a fragmented sun "could concentrate anew and rise as one." The travelers see a "moon-made" rainbow "like a trellis gate," and as if they were entering another realm entirely they are "vouchsafed the miracle / that never yet two other two befell." The "wonder" is that the rainbow did not recede as they walked toward it but "gathered [its ends] together in a ring." Frost's conclusion underscores both the sudden but momentary suspension of time and the brief but astonishing communion between friends: "And we stood in it softly circled round / From all division time or foe can bring / In a relation of elected friends" (418).