Robert Frost's Poem 'Acquainted With The Night'

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California on March 26, 1874 (Stern). Frost’s upbringing and the way he felt throughout his life were demonstrated as he “portrayed [his] homesickness and painful loneliness” (Kidd 1). The connection Frost had with the common man is due in large part to the fact he was a farmer himself and that was displayed through various poems throughout his life (Stern 1). The Poem “Acquainted with the night” goes through a melancholy acceptance of something that is sad and difficult to bear. Frost’s poem “Acquainted with the night” expresses the theme of isolation while also setting a tone of loneliness, depression, and acceptance of life. The phrases and words that frost uses set a gloomy mood throughout the poem with words such as unwilling, cry, unearthly, saddest, and dropped. Frost’s “use of “one” signifies a single person with a lone consciousness” (Kent 2) while also exemplifying the isolation he feels with being alone. The poet says “I have walked down the saddest city lane” (Frost, Robert, line 2) as a

Frost writes of the “luminary clock” (12) which can be “interpreted as the moon” (Kidd 2). Frost also states that the clock was an “ unearthly height” (11), which means the clock was something unearthly like the moon. The narrator observes the clock from “the outskirts of town” (Kidd 2) meaning he is still staring at something that was also in the town. This shows that the narrator has left the town and is nearing towards the solitude in which he so desperately covets. When Frost says that the clock “proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right” (13) he took time to “consider his life and all its questions and possibilities” (Kidd 2). The symbolism of the clock as well as the vivid descriptions to go along with the symbolism reiterate the theme of isolation as well as the tone of