Frost Poems

8/6/2019 Frost Poems

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DUST OF SNOW

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.


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Two Look at Two

Love and forgetting might have carried them

A little further up the mountainside

With night so near, but not much further up.They must have halted soon in any case

With thoughts of the path back, how rough it was

With rock and washout, and unsafe in the darkness;When they were halted by a tumbled wall

With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,

Spending what onward impulse they still had

In one last look the way they must not go,On up the failing path, where, if a stone

Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;

No footstep moved it. "This is all," they sighed,"Good-night to woods." But not so; there was more.

A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them

Across the wall, as near the wall as they.She saw them in their field, they her in hers.

The difficulty of seeing what stood still,

Like some up-ended boulder split in two,

Was in her clouded eyes: they saw no fear there.She seemed to think that, two thus, they were safe.

Then, as if they were something that, though strange,

She could not trouble her mind with too long,She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.

"This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?"

But no, not yet. A snort bid them wait.A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them

Across the wall, as near the wall as they.

This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril,Not the same doe come back into her place.

He viewed them quizzically with jerks of his head,

As if to ask, "Why don't you make some motion?

Or give some sign of life? Because you can't.I doubt if you're as living as you look."

Thus till he had them almost feeling dared

To stretch a proffereing hand - and a spell-breaking.

Then he too passed unscared along the wall.Two had seen two, whichever side you spoke from.

"This mustbe all." 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.


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Literary Analysis

"Two Look at Two" is grounded in the mirror images of nature and man. The wall that blocks

the pair's climb serves as the reflective surface between the human world and the pristine

untouched world where 'if a stone or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself'. It is telling that

the two hikers can only observe the world of the doe and the buck, and not participate, as muchof Frost's poetry reveals his feeling that there is an affinity between man and nature, but that the

two are irreconcilably different. The hikers are almost tricked into reaching out to nature, butFrost makes it clear that their 'spell-braking' hand, in line 36, would shatter the mirror of the

wall, and send the deer dashing away.

There is an unmistakably childish joy about the poem, one that turns the woods into a fairyland

where magical things happen and the commonplace becomes extraordinary. This is emphasizedby the anthropomorphizing of the deer into intellectual creatures, and the repetition, in various

forms of the hikers' final comment: 'this is all'. The deer, which contemplate the humans and

come to the conclusion that they are large boulders, are as well developed characters as the

hikers, adding to the fairy-tale feel of the poem.

The intelligence of the deer also adds to the mirror effect of the poem, by making the deer equal

to the hikers. Because of the way the deer are presented, the reader feels that it is two looking at

two as opposed to a pair of hikers who were lucky enough to see some deer. It becomes areciprocal experience, and it feels as if the entire poem could be flipped around to be the story of

the deer coming down the mountain, only to be stopped by the wall. It could just as easily be the

deer saying 'this is all', then noticing the humans.

One can't help thinking of another poem of Frost 's that focuses on a wall, "Mending Wall", inwhich he walks the property line with his neighbor and resets the wall after the winter has

toppled parts of it. In that poem, the wall is a dividing force that Frost is reluctant to reconstruct,

but the day of walking the wall and talking with his neighbor is an important experience. In

"Two Look at Two", although the wall divides man and nature, it also allows them to coexist ina way that would be impossible if it were not for the wall. It is the fact that the hikers had to stop

at the wall which allowed them to see the deer. If they had continued, even 'not much farther up'

they could have frightened the deer and never would have experienced the 'one unlooked forfavor'.

Reading Analysis

An important word that I emphasized in the first part of this poem is 'much' in line 3. The phraseputs a limit on human penetration into these woods, even before the wall abruptly stops the

couple.

I attempted to make the readings of the appearance of the buck and the doe very similar,especially the repeated lines: 'as near the wall as they'. I felt that these lines were the heart of the

poem and required consistency. The fact that the deer are so close is nature's favor to the hikers

and, as such, I felt it deserved extra attention.


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I also added a pause during the buck's thought process. It is during this line that the buck makesa decision about the two humans, and I felt it appropriate to, for lack of a better phrase, give the

deer time to think.

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Frost Poems