Earthward By Robert Frost
Robert Frost's "To Earthward" is an intimate
lyric in which an old man
reflects upon his passionate experiences with love
as a youth and the lack of
such experiences in his old age. Through diction,
imagery and structure, the
tone of the speaker changes from one of gentle
nostalgia to resentment toward
the ephemeral nature of love. The entire poem,
which consists of eight
quatrains, adheres to a structure of six syllables in
the first three lines of a
quatrain and four syllables in the last line. Also
throughout the colloquial
piece are external rhymes, which are sometimes
imperfect, but are used to keep
the steady rhythm. This use of diction and
structure makes the poem seem more
universal. The speaker's situation is one
that we all will experience someday.
Alliteration is for emphasize in
"bitter bark/ And burning clove"
(23-24) and "stiff and sore and scarred"
(25). The alliteration of
harsh "B" and blunt "S" sounds accentuate the
speaker's
discontent with the dispassionate state of his current way of life.
In the first
four quatrains the speaker is reminiscing about his experiences
with love in his
youth. He recalls how little it took to enchant him and that
"love at the
lips was touch/ as sweet as I could bear" (1-2) for in his youth
love had
seemed extremely intense. Vivid descriptions create a vibrant and
fragrant image
of his early love as a "musk/ From hidden grapevine springs/
Downhill at
dusk" (6-8) that made him feel as though he would "swirl and
ache/
From sprays of honeysuckle/ That when they're gathered shake/ Dew
on the
knuckle" (9-12). But the image of a rose petal that stings in lines
15-16
begins the speaker's diversion toward resentment. He implies that the
joyful
aspects of love are so intense because of the pain and tension that
accompany
love. Now that he is old, the speaker feels the need to live
passionately before
he dies. He no longer fears the pain that accompanies
love because he
desperately longs for the intense love he experienced as a
youth. He "crave(s)
the stain/ Of tears, the aftermark/ Of almost too much
love" (21-22)
because he did not appreciate the transient nature of love
until too late in his
life. He is left to pound on the ground (his future
resting-place), resentful
that his longing for love will never be as intense
as the experience of
love
itself.