Desert Places
Desert Places by Robert Frost
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last. The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places
In the poem “Desert Places” by Robert Frost, The speaker is a lonely man who is not feeling a sense of belonging within himself. Also winter does not offer to help the lonely man. Instead it assists his feelings of loneliness. “And the ground almost covered smooth in snow” (line 3). As line three indicates, the speaker is watching an empty field being covered by more and more snow. This connotes concealing the beauty of the field. The snow imagery communicates the feelings of disappointing winter and emptiness. The observation of loneliness in winter and isolation from the world is nothing compare to the feelings of loneliness and emptiness within. This meaning is effectively communicated by the poem’s imagery and by the denotation and connotation of the words Frost has chosen.
In the first stanza, the setting is developed with the use of words ‘night’ and ‘snow’ and they both carry negative connotation. Snow is employed throughout the poem to show the lack of identity; it also has characteristics of cold and formless white sheet. This observations show an image of snow falling fast, destroying the beauty of the field and covering up everything that is living. Similarly the ‘night’ has a negative connotation of darkness, the blackness and visionless that
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last. The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places
In the poem “Desert Places” by Robert Frost, The speaker is a lonely man who is not feeling a sense of belonging within himself. Also winter does not offer to help the lonely man. Instead it assists his feelings of loneliness. “And the ground almost covered smooth in snow” (line 3). As line three indicates, the speaker is watching an empty field being covered by more and more snow. This connotes concealing the beauty of the field. The snow imagery communicates the feelings of disappointing winter and emptiness. The observation of loneliness in winter and isolation from the world is nothing compare to the feelings of loneliness and emptiness within. This meaning is effectively communicated by the poem’s imagery and by the denotation and connotation of the words Frost has chosen.
In the first stanza, the setting is developed with the use of words ‘night’ and ‘snow’ and they both carry negative connotation. Snow is employed throughout the poem to show the lack of identity; it also has characteristics of cold and formless white sheet. This observations show an image of snow falling fast, destroying the beauty of the field and covering up everything that is living. Similarly the ‘night’ has a negative connotation of darkness, the blackness and visionless that