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Chapter -2

The Journey Myth

In the Greco-Roman context journey is a matter of heroic adventure invariably

terminating in human victory. The Greek heroes like mythological Hercules and classical

Ulysses conduct their journeys with a stubborn hope of victory at the end. But the

Biblical journey is always a matter of human crisis. The desired destiny here is a

spiritual salvation itself. Therefore, the journey in the Christian context is always a

matter of spiritual transcendence, with its ultimate goal in the Heaven itself after the

Doomsday. In the Christian journey myth Jesus, the Son of God, always comes to the

rescue of the true Christians by way of taking the punishment for their sins and ending all

God's wrath against them. There is only one way for all men to be accepted by God back

into the Heaven, that is by trusting Jesus Christ who will take away their sins. Thus God

will accept and acquit the true Christians - declare them 'not guilty.' All of them can be

saved in the same way by coming to Christ, "For whosoever shall call upon the name of

the Lord shall be saved" (Rom. 10:13).

In this context Robert Frost's "The Peaceful Shepherd" is a short lyric worth

quoting:

If heaven were to do again,

And on the pasture bars,

I leaned to line the figures in

Between the dotted stars,

I should be tempted to forget,

I fear, the Crown of Rule,

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The Scales of Trade, The Cross of Faith,

As hardly worth renewal.

For these have governed in our lives,

And see how men have warred

The Cross, The Crown, The Scales may all

As well have been the Sword. (CP 319)

The second stanza is absolutely reflective of the Biblical spirit. The type of self

search through true introspection is exactly on the lines of what is stated in the Bible, in

the story of Genesis. Adam and Eve ate a fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and

evil. "Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground

from whence he was taken" (Gen. 3:23).

When Adam was thrown to the earth, he fell on the hard rocks. But Frost has a

wishful desire. If the fall has to take place once more ('If heaven were to do again'), he

has a preference to fall 'on the pasture bars.' This gives an opportunity to draw for

himself the very experience of falling on to earth through 'the dotted stars.' He leans 'to

line the figures in between the dotted stars.'

It is evident that he has a keen desire to experience the journey of falling from the

Heaven to the earth. But this Romantic desire to recapitulate the fall might make him

forget for a while the true nature of the immensity of the Christian Godhead. He has a

fear that he should be tempted to forget 'The Crown of Rule', 'The Scales of Trade', 'The

Cross of Faith'.
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But then all the three epithets refer to the manner of ordinary people conducting

the adventure of their life. But this should not be the real guiding force of life. The

ultimate power is in 'the Sword' that is in the wrath of God. If so, the peaceful shepherd

suggested in the title of the poem is not to be taken casually. This peaceful Shepherd is

Jesus himself and the poem implies that the stem laws of Christian God are ultimately

responsible for man's salvation.

Robert Frost has also to say that the same stem laws of God are ultimately

responsible for the differences and hatreds in the human beings. Man always hankers

after destruction, probably out of a selfish understanding of the powers of God. The

same fact is stated clearly in the Old Testament book of The Proverbs. There it is stated

"Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied"( Prov. 27 :20).

The Poet's desire 'to line the figures in between the dotted stars' is certainly a

matter of his metaphysical rebellion against the omnipotent Christian God head. But then

this is the human way of aspiring for a victory and revenge against God. He wants to take

a poetic licence with a mind to analyse for himself the secret of God's strength. Again,

poetically he finds it in his own introspective self, which provokes him to rebel, but then

he knows it fully well that it is a temptation to forget the real greatness of God. It is this

kind of doubting-Tom sentiment in the poet that ultimately drives him to the bliss of the

pagan acknowledgement of life. The concluding lines of the last poem of A Boy's Will,

"Reluctance," are very important in this context :

Ah, When to the heart of Man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

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And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season? (CP 43)

In a true pagan manner he nurtures in himself a rare courage that would not allow him to

'accept the end I Of a love or a season,' because a defeatist conception of existence is not

'less than a treason.' Therefore, Frost prefers to conduct the journey of life with a

courage-to-be in the world of existence.

A. The Spiritual Journey

Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" explains the

meticulous manner in which both the Greco-Roman and the Judaeo-Christian mythic

properties recreated in him a poetic experience, which ultimately clarifies the basic

human purpose of both these mythological components. This poem is one of the finest

examples in which Frost fondly represents both the Greco-Roman and the Judaeo-

Christian allusions implicitly. As Lawrance Thompson puts it, in this poem "there is a

drama-in-miniature revealed with setting and lighting and actors and properties

complete" (22).

But, however, Lawrance Thompson does not include the mytho-poetical

characteristic features that go to complete the 'drama-in-miniature.' These mytho-

poetical anonymous particulars quite casually implemented in the basic structure of the

poem almost elude the critical attention of the scholars. The very journey myth metaphor

in which the structural scenario of the poem abounds is typically responsible for the

implicit Puritanic animations in the heart of Robert Frost. The journey metaphor of the

poem automatically invites a comparison to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. While

the journey in the Pilgrim's Progress characterises the spiritual advancement of the

protagonist on his journey to the top of the mountain and with the sins of the people
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burdened on his back, the fanner journeying protagonist of "Stopping by Woods on a

Snowy Evening" conducts his journey, probably with the burden of his own sin on his

back.

The journey metaphor in which the poem is conceived conforms with the Biblical

metaphysical idea of characterising hwnan life itself as a continual journey from birth to

death, with all its accompanying incidents. In this Christian manner of life's journey

there is no obvious place for any 'stopping.' But then the Greco-Roman myths contain

innumerable examples of the mythological heroes stopping and stationing themselves for

the situational challenges and adventures. The Greek mythological heroes of the past

also used to stop for enjoying the beauty and grandeur of the Royal houses of the Heaven

and the Earth in between their adventures.

In the like manner the protagonist of the "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy

Evening" is instinctively arrested by the startling beauty of the woods on a snowy

evemng. Referring to the poem, Marie Borroff confirms the "sensually appealing

landscape near at hand" (76). But the sensuality of appeal in the landscape is more

intellectual and imaginative than being instinctively ecstatic, as in the case of Romantics.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep" (CP 275); all the adjectival words in thick

sequence contribute to mystification rather than excitation. On a symbolist,

expressionistic analogy, this also reflects at the old age of the protagonist himself, for

whom the prospect of heat in adventure has lost with his lapsed youth. Obviously he is

an old man for whom sensual experience creates mystifying introspections rather than

instinctive sublime thoughts. T. S. Eliot's Alfred J. Prufrock, with his bygone and

suspended youth is worth recalling here as a parallel. Alfred J. Prufrock of Eliot's love

song metamorphoses into his Tiresias of The Waste Land. Thus, the Greco-Roman
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connection, however far-fetched, remote, and tenuous it is, haunts the personality of the

journey-man in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Even then the awe-inspiring presence of the wood in front of him is an instinctive

challenge for him. It stops him and sends him to a momentary introspection into his own

interiority, with a self-searching notion of rightness or otherwise of his very act of

stopping by woods. Concerning Robert Frost's pagan enthusiasm in encountering the

mystifying beauties of nature, James M. Cox says, "Confronting these desert places of his

landscape, Frost needs all the restraint at his command, for the dark woods possess a

magnetic attraction drawing him spellbound into them" (qtd. in Armstrong 445). And in

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" Cox sees the powerful fascination the woods

have upon the lonely traveller, " ... who is transfixed by the compelling invitation of the

forest" (qtd. in Armstrong 445).

Whether this whispering invitation comes from the darkness, the woods, the

snow, or all the three put together, it is a strangely appealing one. This kind of passionate

appeal involved in the mystery of the object of experience proposes a challenge for the

human spirit, and invites for a spirited exploration. Since it has its own fascinating

beauty well contained in it, the human intentions are exhausting and enjoying the same.

There are the specific intentional modalities of man prompted by the ancient pagan spirit

entrenched in his very life force. Precisely speaking, it concerns with the unending urge

in the man to know the mysteries of the modem times. But here it is the mysterious

beauty of the woods that puts this invitation for Robert Frost.

This kind of attraction towards beauty as a prospect of knowledge is scripturally

forbidden in the Judaeo-Christian conventions. It is cognate with Eve's temptation to eat

the apple that is the fruit of knowledge, and then enticing Adam to repeat the same.
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Eating this fruit of knowledge ultimately involved them in the Original Sin, by way of

forcing them to know the mystery of their mutual attractions in being contrarily formed

creatures in their physical features. Ultimately this Original Sin is responsible for

permanent loss of the Garden of Eden and also for the fall of man. After the fall, man is a

stranger in the Garden of Eden and, moreover, expressly forbidden and restrained to look

at the Garden of Eden.

Every wood on the earth being the image of the original Garden of Eden, the

metaphysical doubting of the spokesperson of the poem is obvious. His instinctive

attraction towards the beauty of the forest, that too in the cold snowy evening, amounts

categorically to repeat the Original Sin in his intentions. It is evident here that both the

Greco-Roman and the Judaeo-Christian antithetical formulas of life are working

simultaneously and driving the poet to a state of strange indeterminateness concerning the

admissibility or otherwise of his intention to stop by the woods.

Quite characteristically of his own poetic temper or temperament of falling into a

'delight' on encountering a thing of joy and beauty, the poet puts a searching question as

an initial impulse: "Whose woods these are" (CP 275). The woods which are 'lovely,'

'dark,' and 'deep,' hastening the onlooker to direct his thoughts towards the owner and

his personal property and exclusive privacy into which the spokesperson is seeking a

secret and stealthy peep.

As it is a well-known fact about Robert Frost that for him the initial delight is in

the surprise of remembering something he did not know he knew. The vague and

searching manner in which he resolves the momentary doubt is to be found in the

immediate epithet that follows: "I think I know" (CP 275). He further particularises him

when he says, "His house is in the village though" (CP 275). The owner of the house is
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not anywhere near. He has a house in the village, which is at a distance from where the

owner cannot detect the gazer seeking a secret peep into his privacy or the naked beauty

of his property. Therefore, he would not catch him involved in this forbidden act.

One has to remember that Adam, the original ancestor of humanity, was thrown

out in order to forbid him from enjoying the beauty of the garden itself. If so, the

properties of man and God are divided and forbidden for each other. The poet's act here

amounts to a sort of indiscretion of the law of trespassing into somebody else's property.

Scripturally speaking, it is a sin, and the guilt-consciousness accompanies it. But,

however, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep" (CP 275).

The very phenomena of his appreciation and comprehension of the beauty of

woods suggest his pagan determination to enjoy the beauty of the presented as far as it is

available for him. Woods are lovely; but then they are 'deep', since their beauty is

inexhaustible for him. It is interesting to note that Frost is under the profound and

stunning poetic influence of another pagan in English poetry that is John Keats. Both

Frost and Keats present the sensuous pictures in enamouring manner. The final picture of

what they want to confection is so mystified for perceptive experience that it would

create in the reader a deep urge to capture the presented picture exhaustively.

But both Frost and Keats mystify the presented through carefully chosen verbal

pyrotechniques. When John Keats says in his "Ode to a Nightingale," "My heart aches

and a drowsy numbness pains I My sense as though of hemlock I had drunk" (1-2), he is

simply confusing and mystifying the given through deviated verbal expressions. One

after the other the epithets used by John Keats are absolutely difficult progressively for a

perceptive experience, but then, the music of the verbal composition is so enchanting that

we do not bother to appropriate for ourselves the perceptual properties in an exhaustive

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manner. Even if we try they will not be available for concretisation. We are literally

incapable of the perceptual experience of Keats' 'heart aches,' or his 'drowsy numbness'

paining or his 'hemlock' drinking.

But, however, the cumulative 'sound of sense' (Frost's phrase) becomes available

for bleak and oblique sensuous apprehensions that are required to be re-created by the

reader himself through his imaginations. More or less the same sort of poetic techniques

are being used by Frost when he says, 'Woods are lovely dark and deep.' Loveliness is a

perceptual visual image; darkness is a colossal ellipse of the visual perceptions; and depth

is a matter of emotional and mental comprehension.

If so, all the three epithets in a fundamental manner cut at each other. But,

however, in being musical in their assortment they go to give the very 'sound of sense' as

a heard melody. In all this kind of authentic manner of searching for beauty and joy,

there is a pagan enthusiasm that had been perfected in the beautiful ancient Greek myths.

The readers of Ovid's Metamorphosis are abundantly familiar with the most sensuous

profundities of the ancient Greek myths. Ovid is a formative influence on both John

Keats and Robert Frost.

However, this act of attempting to enjoy the beauty of the woods, particularly on a

snowy evening when cold icy flakes are showering on the tops of the trees is again a

matter of a poetical use of antithesis. The cold atmosphere arousing in the given is again

a profound manner of mystification. But, however, it is such a mystification wherewith

he envelopes the reader's impulsive reaction to the presented in quite a concretised

manner again through 'sound of sense.'

The journey metaphor is explicit. The New England farmer is on his sleigh drawn

by his horse. Quite ironically even the animal in the horse probably felt it ahnom1al. as
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he says, "My little horse must think it queer I To slop without 8 funnhousc ncar" (CI'

275). This implies that the protagonist is 8 habitual stopper wherever there is o prospect

of comf(>rt and shelter, as in a farmhouse. He is 8 hero who would rest in the farmhouse

in between his adventures of travel, just like Hercules of the ancient Greek myths. It has

also a sinister connotation in the sense of stopping by funnhouses und inns, which is

practically on attempt of trying to indulge in sensual pleasures. The most discrete

religious character in Geoffrey Chaucer's Prologue to Canterbury Tales, called Friar,

knows every inn and hotel around him. Chaucer makes it clear that his Friar is the most

obnoxious religious character who indulges in sensual pleasures. Incidentally,

indulgence into sensual pleasures is a trait of heroic activity in the Greek mythological

context. But then, it is the most sinister activity according to the Christian ethics and

morals.

There is a way of interpreting the horse as a poet's authentic conscience keeper,

who is capable of reminding him about the rights and wrongs of his activities, "He gives

his harness bells a shake I To ask if there is some mistake" (CP 275). Symbolically, the

horse on which he is travelling is cognate with the inner consciousness of man on which a

Christian journeyman is expected to travel in his mortal condition of life. So for a true

Christian the real rectifier and reminder of the probity of his behaviour is ultimately his

conscience alone. It is in accordance with this conscience that a true Christian has to

process his journey. It is not his free will that should provoke him to make incidental

decisions and judgments. Conscience in its true Christian sense is above the free will and

it finally pronounces its judgment. Incidentally, it is worth recalling here that 'free will'

with all its attendant choices and freedom is the life force of pagan philosophy of life.
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The cont1ict between the pagan intentions and the Christian serenity ultimately

comes to the poet in this context when he is reminded by his horse (conscience) to make

a re-verification, 'if there is some mistake' in 'stopping by woods.' In a very interesting

manner the whole atmosphere was abounding in silence. The only other sound m

addition to the harness bells is the sound of 'the sweep of easy wind and downy flake.'

The wind is a free lancer of its movement. It beats whichever way it likes, but

then, the downy flakes that are falling invariably go down. While the easy wind prompts

the thoughts of free will, the downy icy flake, being a typical shape of water only,

invariably suggests at the inevitability of falling and forming part of the earth in being

squeezed into it. The 'sound of sense' of the easy wind and downy flake cumulatively,

and quite metaphysically reminds him of the destiny of man.

According to the scriptures, man has no licence to stop anywhere with an

intention of exhausting the beauty of the creation of God. God, as well as his creation, is

inscrutable by humans according to Christian theology. But the pagan philosophy puts it

the other way round. In the mortal condition of a being, the only thing that must count is

what his ultimate commitments are. In spite of the fact that 'woods are lovely, dark and

deep,' he has heavy 'promises to keep.' Frost's sudden stretching into the covenant

theology is explicit here. Jesus, The Son of God, entered into a covenant with his Father

that he would go on to the Earth and bring some human beings back to Heaven after

involving them to true repentance. This promise is the covenant entered into by the Son

of God with God. The Father should be the ruling force of life for all true Christians.

Therefore, the poet evinces his conviction in stating "But I have promises to keep" (CP

275).
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This implies that he takes upon himself the true Christian conviction of fulfilling

the act of true repentance before he meets his final end. In the very beginning of the

poem, the poet has abundantly clarified that 'the owner of the woods has a house in the

village.' If so, the owner of the woods that is God himself is certainly not anywhere near.

But he owns a house in the village which is at a distance. This house should ultimately

provide the shelter for the journeymen, and then the metaphysical journey of the poet is

to that house only.

By suggestive implication this house is nothing but the Holy Church which

provides initial shelter to all the souls, until the doomsday, in its yard. The protagonist's

journey is obviously to that house. In the meantime, in the course of his journey, he

stopped for a while and started taking a peep into the exclusive privacy of God's creation.

If so, this must be a sin for which he has to repent, and then continue his journey to his

ultimate destiny. In between, he has to be conscious of his promises, which, of course, is

the same as the covenant (contract) of Jesus. It is Ralph Waldo Emerson that had

reminded the Americans about this implicit covenant which is presented as an instinctive

provocative particular in the nature's beauty. If so, nature's beauty itself is not a

phenomenon for stopping man from his ultimate purpose. Nature's beauty must act as a

phenomenal invitation for man to conduct himself in accordance with the scriptures

during the metaphysical journey of life.

The exhausting and exhaustive nature of living one's own life is in its duty

boundness. There are 'Miles to go before I sleep I And miles to go before I sleep.' This

sleep that Frost refers to had been adjudged as the final sleep of death into which man is

destined to go. It is customary in the obsequious ceremonies of Christian Burials to

pronounce, 'Water goes to water, air to air, fire to fire, and thou goes to sleep in the
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bosom of Abraham.' This Bosom of Abraham is the earth itself into which all the dead

are buried; and the house (The Church) keeps the souls for the Day of Judgment. The

poetic impulse, in a way, is itself created in the mind of poet because of the irresolvable

tangle between the pagan and the Christian phllosophies of life. They both confuse the

minds of the people in such a way that they are not in a position to arrive at any firm

decision. These two philosophies are antithetical in nature and their approach to life. But

Frost conceives a momentary poetical marmer of being drawn to paganism for a while in

order to get reminded of the ultimate Christian purpose of being-in-the-world.

If so, according to him it is easier to become a true Christian by way of

considering the Pagan philosophy as a chance particular in the adventure of life. Beauty

deserves to be considered but only for a while and in the final analysis duty must be the

guiding force. If one gets reminded of this duty (Christian) on being arrested by beauty

(pagan) it is not bad poetically speaking. Referring to the structural aspect of this poem,

Lawrance Thompson has to say as follows:

Considered from the view point of the poetic impulse, it is quite probable

that the poet, impelled emotionally to record "this real or imagined

experience, did not immediately see in it any metaphorical correspondence

between the sight of the moment and the insight of the past-in-the-present.

Yet a correspondence appears with dramatic clarity in the final stanza.

(23)

The correspondence that he speaks of 'between the sight of the moment and the insight of

the past-in-the-present' clearly states the significance of the past. But then the

particularity of the past has not been brought out either by Thompson or by any other

critic of Robert Frost. In a phenomenal manner the reference to the past-in-the- present
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must invariably refer to Adlar' s psychological phenomena of group psyche or a herd

memory.

If the whole humanity is taken as a unit, it is consistently linked with the entirety

of the past. The past itself is recorded and kept up in the prehistoric times in the manner

of myths and legends which ultimately characterized the basic and fundamental manner

of human activity in the Greco-Roman and the Judaeo-Christian myths.

The metaphorical correspondence that Lawrance Thompson speaks of is a very

important mode of poetic operation in almost all the poems of Robert Frost. Equally

important mode is to be found in his mytho-poetic correspondence. Broadly speaking,

the New England of Robert Frost is a comprehensive poetic manner of mythically

confectioning the present exactly in the image of the ancient myths and legends.

The practical and realistic operation of his characten within the properties of New

England rusticity is the primordial manner of visualizing life as a worthwhile labour. All

his dramatic personae are the true labourers in analogy to the true swinkers of the

vineyard myths in the New Testament of the Bible.

If so, the nature which provides them an opportunity to live with their human

spirit intact should be a theological force of liberation from the heavy duties of mortal

encumbrances. In the nature itself they evolve for themselves their parameters of true

existence as a corollary to his "On a Tree Fallen Across the Road." A further

clarification of the poetical convictions of Robert Frost comes with it.

1. Impeding Nature of the Nature.

Unlike "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" which is a poetic assortment

of four quatrains in a folk colloquial manner, his poem "On a Tree Fallen Across the

Road" is a Shakespearean sonnet, with its rhyme scheme ab ab cd cd ef ef gg. In both the
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poems there is a spiritual synonymity. "On a Tree Fallen Across the Road" reflects pagan

intentions of unending quest for journey and adventure, where every possible obstruction

is just a reminder to "steer straight off after something into space" (CP 296).

For an ancient pagan both time and space are a given in the sense that they are the

fields of his adventure and exploration. Life itself is a scorebook of unending acts of

discourse and achievements in progress. Therefore:

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood

Throws down in front of us is not to bar

Our passage to our journey's end for good,

But just to ask us who we think we are

Insisting always on our own way so. (CP 296)

As a matter of fact, the tempest-thrown tree puts all sorts of fears in the mind of the

adventurer concerning the possible outcome of his adventure. The fallen tree itself has an

intended design in its mind. This is evident when he says, "She likes to halt us in our

runner tracks, I And make us get down in a foot of snow I Debating what to do without an

ax" (CP 296).

The fallen tree is just symbolic of any possible obstructions that are likely to come

in our way. The expression 'in our running tracks' automatically draws an allusion to

Atalante in Greek mythology, who had been thrown three golden apples in order to be

defeated by Meilanion in the running race. Here' the tempest' is like the Greek

mythological Atalante and the tree turned into a crash up wood 'in front of us' is

synonymous with the golden apples.

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Again, to put a momentary debate as to 'what to do without an ax' when tree had

made to 'get down in a foot of snow', is just the manner in which a hero must brace

himself with the problems that he faces in the course of his journey. It also suggests that

the traveller would have found his way out according to his determination if only he

could have an axe in his hand. The expression 'make us get down in a foot of snow' is

very important here. Snow being a cold agent, it can be comprehended as to have cold

fared and chiselled our courage on our way to success. But it also means to imply that it

had brought us to a dead end, suggesting the 'foot of snow' as something which has put

us to death by way of totally stopping us. Even this death need not deter us from the

achievement of the final goal, therefore:

And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:

We will not be put off the fmal goal

We have it hidden in us to attain,

Not though we have to seize earth by the pole. (CP 296)

According to the Christian mythology all the evil in the world and the seven

plagues thereof, do not deter man from aiming at achieving his final redemption. Man

'will not be put off the final goal' because the goal itself is 'hidden' in him 'to attain.' So

the pagan hero's heroic intentions suddenly converge into the Christian martyr cherishing

up of redemption as the final goal.

As a matter of fact, the Christian hero does not have anything to do with this

earth. It is only a transitory place of his operation, with his final goal being the heaven.

So, for this cherished purpose of achieving the final goal we need not 'have to seize earth

by the pole,' meaning thereby that it is not our physical province or the incidental

weapons (an axe) that can steer us "Straight off after something into space" (CP 296 ).
 76

In the meantime all our physical demonstration of contending with the death itself

or all other casual obstructions simply turn us tired, but not defeated or hopeless in the

ultimate sense. The Christian tri-partial cosmological distribution of Heaven, Earth, and

Hell is a spacious opportunity given unto man; therefore, the poem concludes that we

have to 'Steer straight off after something into space,' instead of aimlessly 'circling in

one place.' The ultimate presence of this 'something' in space, in spite of the fact that it

is hidden from our perceptual physical boundaries, is intuitively given to us; it is hidden

in us to attain. But that something always remains elusive and oblique for human

apprehensions and attempts of grasping at it. The spirit of challenge is equally hidden in

us. Both these hidden forces pennanently contend with each other.

Both "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and "On a Tree Fallen Across

the Road" strategically contain in themselves, as their themes, the epic adventures on a

journey. The very journey is always conducted with a faith or belief of coming out

victorious at the end. This victory is all-important. Any obstruction on the way,

including death, is not likely to deviate or subvert in achieving the fmal goal of life. Both

the poems initiate the struggle in the heroic manners of the pagan spirit and finally

culminate themselves into the choice manner of defending faith as the final holder of all

hopes of victory in life.

In both the poems the protagonist is a New England rustic. The rustic hero of

Frost, working himself in the limited range of his environmental prospects, developing

into himself a rare theological wisdom is in itselfthe soul of Robert Frost's poetry. The

two poems start in wonder and terror respectively. But both these wonder and terror as

initial impulses bring into the poet's mind a sense of 'delight' which ultimately gives him

a wisdom, after innumerable intennediary considerations.

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2. The Journey of Life

The spirit of adventure finds its specific philosophical culmination in another

poem called "The Times Table." Here again the journey man is a New England rustic.

On his journey, "More than half way up the pass I Was a spring with a broken drinking

glass" (CP 336). The 'spring with a broken drinking glass' is an obvious reference to the

grail in the book of Saint Mark in the Bible. The water of the spring is the purifier of the

rustic knight. The brokenness of the drinking glass is itself an indication that the spiritual

opportunities of drinking the water of the spring is denied to him.

But seeing the glass itself, as broken as it is, is an indication of his purity and

innocence. According to the Bible only the pure can see it. Frost is in his own

characteristic manner introducing a colloquial humorous pun in presenting a broken

drinking glass and suddenly expressing the doubt 'whether the farmer drank or not'. On

the colloquial idiom drinking is synonymous with taking liquor and falling into

drunkenness.

In "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," he introduces the protagonist's

conscience as a horse, which reminds him by way of shaking his bells, if there was any

mistake in the adventurer's stopping by the woods. But here just for the sake of poetic

variation, he introduces a mare:

His mare was sure to observe the spot

By cramping the wheel on a water-bar,

Turning her forehead with a star,

And straining her ribs for a monster sigh. (CP 336)

As in the case of"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," as well as here, the 'horse'

and 'mare' symbolically stand for his conscience on which he is conducting his joumcy.
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The journey is always associated with the fear of death bringing the ultimate stop of the

journeyman in his physical state. To the above gestures of the 'mare,' the farmer rustic

journeyman achieves in himself the following wisdom:

A sigh for every so many breath,

And for every so many sign a death

That's what I always tell my wife

Is the multiplication table of life. (CP 336)

Breath is both an indicator of life as well as a show of courage-to-be in the world. It is an

evident fact that breath itself functions always in stop and proceed formula of existence.

Breath, the indicator of life always progresses in stops and goes until the final stop

emerges as a categorical phase. This implies that with every breath, the life is

multiplying itself. Proleptically breath, as an act of confounding courage, implies that

life has to be continued with spells of courage one after the other. This is what the horse

and mare, standing symbolically for his conscience, prompt the farmer from within.

In all the three poems the Christian formula of journey and the Christian Saints'

formula of redemption at the end are suggestively brought out. But, however, the journey

itself is conducted in the true spirit of a pagan. Once Robert Lowell said of Emerson as

"a good Greek disguised as a Yankee Sage" (qtd. in Hopkins 177). This expression is

literally true in the case of Robert Frost also. While the foreground of Frost's landscape

is in New England, the very spirit in which he particularly makes his poem vibrant is to

be found in the ancient mythological forces, both Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian1

which kept the whole human civilization on its course of march into the future. Robert

Frost categorically states in his "Hyla Brook": "We love the things we love for what they

are" (CP 149). Very often this is considered as a keynote of realism. But Frost himself
 79

states it in the context of "Hyla Brook" which is a dried up Brook in the present, "Its bed

is left a faded paper sheet I Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat" (CP 149).

The entire glory of the brook then concerns with the memory of its presence in the

past. Even the memory of the ancient myths are hidden in the experiences stored up as

memory, in the very content of the race, "Like ghost of sleigh bells in a ghost of snow"

(CP 149). The image of sleigh bells is quite explicit of the intentions of Robert Frost. He

means to imply that we are still conducting our practical and imaginative journeys of life

on the old suggested 'sleigh-bells' of the mythological past.

B. The Journey into the Darkness from Light

Dylan Thomas in his "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" (qtd. in Cox 211)

exhorts his dying father with the initial statement, "Do not go gentle into that good

night." But Frost is Frost. He has the whole Christian and pagan mythology at his back

to assure him. It appears as if he took upon himself the personality of Biblical Lazarus

and pagan Hercules, and then wrote the poem "Acquainted with the Night."

The poem celebrates one more archetypal mythical journey with a difference.

This time it is from light into darkness, from life into death, an interminable darkness that

might set in after the end of the journey of life. The tonal vibrations of anxiety are

obvious, for example, "acquainted with the night," "looked down the saddest city lane,"

"passed by the watchman," "dropped my eyes," "unwilling to explain" (CP 324). In ·

G;!;Je.; we have the confirmation that Jesus is the light of the world, the Truth: "I am come

a light into the world that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness" (John

12:46). If so, the protagonist's journey into the dark from light implicates the confession

of a sinner who wilfully distanced himself from faith which is death itself. The poet's

dropping his eyes 'unwilling to explain; that i~ to stand as witness is the sin-stricken
 80

conscience here, a sin amounting to death. Therefore, he says, "I have stood still and

stopped the sound of feet" (CP 324). There is no movement any further, no journey any

more.

In the poet we have one who is speaking from the vantage point of view of having

been 'acquainted with the night'. What he is 'unwilling to explain' is the observed shame

that he had 'looked down the saddest city lane? This city then is the city built on sand

heap and not on the solid rock (Echo to the Book of Matthew). That he did not stop the

'sound of feet,' not with any intention to tread back even when "an interrupted cry I

Came over houses from another street" (CP 324). His human impulses came to an end on

being acquainted or adsorbed into the night. Then this night is death itself. No human

can call him 'back to say good bye.' Even in that dark there is an assuring apocalyptic

vision: "And further still at an unearthly height, I One luminary clock against the sky. I

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right" (CP 324).

The luminary clock, an instrument that measures human time, puts a ray of hope

in his puritanic faith. Milton in his "On His Blindness" had already confinned that "They

also serve who only stand and wait" (14). If so the spokesperson is that worker who had

hidden that one talent that God had given him, that is his prime capacity to see the light

that is God. The final repetition of the first line confinns the repentant soul, that is the

poet. The images 'walked out in rain,' 'back in rain,' 'saddest city lane,' 'watchman on

his beat,' 'unearthly height,' 'luminary clock' prominently echo the Biblical imagery.

But the expression 'the time was neither wrong nor right' is at once a puritanic assertion

of hope of redemption, as well as an expression of pagan sentiment suggesting that even

in the hardest and darkest of times also there is always a hope that nurtures a courage in

man as a being-in-the-world.
 81

Referring to this poem Dennis Donoghe comments, "You follow the speaker's

feeling from the first word to last, taking into account of the degree of assertiveness in

'1'"(80). The 'degree of assertiveness' condescends to perplexity coupled with fear and

guilt, born of the Biblical background of the poet. Donoghe concludes his appreciation of

the poem with the following generalisation. "Reading a poem is like meeting its speaker"

(80). But until it comes to the last but one line, it is not a comfortable meeting. It is like

meeting Lazarus who comes back from another world. Biblical Lazarus was brought back

to life by Jesus. But here it is the poet's imagination that conducts the journey. The

journey is quite mind-boggling. But after giving a troubling and perplexing first person

account of the journey, it ends in a note of hopefulness that 'the time was neither wrong

nor night.'

Donoghe further clarifies that "It [the poem] would note that the printed words are

given only as script, and that the reader is urged to convert them into acoustic signs:

speech is supposed to be more present than print" (80). The speech being 'more present

than print' is true with almost all the poems of Robert Frost. He is a poet of

conversations, dialogues, and confessions. Here it is what he confesses that is important.

It is the self-confidence concerning the uniqueness of his experience with 'the night' that

matters. Donoghe erred in stating: "The apparent slide from the dogmatic 'I' to the

vague, third-pronoun 'one' is an evasion making possible the more extreme evasiveness

of 'the night,' a phrase as sonorous as it is obscure, or merely a decent confession of

misgiving about the assertiveness of 'I' in the first place" (80).

At the outset it is not an apparent slide from dogmatic '!' to the vague, third-

pronoun 'one'. The third-pronoun 'one' confirms the stubborn not dogmatic '!', as he is

the only 'one' so acquainted with the night. In this context the words of Robert Pack arc
 82

important. Says Pack: "How much of death, how much of isolation, can one experience

and still return to tell it? When the speaker says, 'I have stood still and stopped the sound

of feet,' the reader may feel that the speaker's heart has virtually stopped, or worse, that

his spirit has died within his stilled body" ( 16).

Here Pack does not draw parallel with the Biblical Lazarus. In this context Pack's

deduction is "still he does not know death for he is merely acquainted with the night"

(17). Pack forgets that Frost uses night as a symbolic entity to mean 'death.' So what he

attempts at telling is about death itself. Like the Biblical Lazarus, Frost also does not

really tell anything concrete about death. Death is just lightless-ness, that is, lifelessness

in spite of the 'luminous clock' in the sky. It suggests that even if we want we cannot

know death and its mystery.

Moreover, Frost is not avoiding 'the night.' On the other hand in stating that 'the

time was neither wrong nor right' in the penultimate line, he is securing for himself, as

well as for the reader, a 'courage-to-be' (to borrow the phrase of Paul Tillitch) in this

world where the dark and interminable night is a certainty after death. This is one more

Christian poem in which as the darkness of the world grows stronger and stronger the

courage-to-be too becomes mightier and mightier. Faith and confidence in one's own

uniqueness as a brave and unfearing soul is the necessary pre-requisite, and this poem

infuses that prerequisite in its readers. The grim note on which poem starts ends in a

strong assuring note of 'the time was neither wrong nor right.' Man, through his doings,

can make it either wrong or right. The extracts from Donoghe are from what it might

lose from the deconstructionist reading of Frost. Donoghe is not at all serious here. He is

just making a parody of what it might be the deconstructionist version of this poem.

Everyone acknowledges that Frost is a devoted modern structuralist. Moreo\'er. no

 83

sensible reader, as Howard Felperin says, "would in this context identifY the speaker of a

poem with its author or with any actual person, or the poem with an assertion of the

author's belief" (118).

Frost's "Acquainted with the Night" compels comparison and contrast with

Dante's Divinea Comedia and Blake's "London." While Dante is soaked in the Christian

and pagan mythologies, Blake developed his own mythology that startles. The first

person authentic 'I,' being acquainted with the night, reminds us of Dante's "dark night

of the souls of the underworld city of Dis, full of cries, as well as that of his own soul," to

quote the words of Howard Felperin (122). It also matches with the 'I' of another

visionary Blake in " London," "also a walker in a city of dreadful night, the darkness of

whose midnight streets is pierced only by the successive cries of infant, chimney-

sweeper, hapless soldier, and youthful harlot," again in the words of Howard Felperin

(122).

There is a significant difference between these midnight maladies and Frost's

'interrupted cry' that "came over houses from another street I But not to call me back or

say good-by" (CP 324). This 'another street' is probably where he belonged before

getting 'acquainted with the night', that is death; none of his people can 'say good-by.'

He is speaking from the middle of the acquainted night from where no journeyman ever

returned or heard its earlier acquaintances speak to him. He is just visualising a

'luminary clock' which proclaimed that 'the time was neither wrong nor right.' Probably

the time is standing still without swinging to wrongs and rights. If so, it is not mundane

time, it is that still point of time which has no movement. This post-mortemnallocus of

the spokesperson creates the utmost anxiety which runs all through the poem. Therefore,

Felperin further says, "He [the poet] may also know Hopkins' 'Terrible Sonnet,' 'I wake
 84

and feel the fell of dark, not day,' nor is Francis Thompson's 'City of dreadful night very

far way"' (122).

Like Hopkins and Thompson Frost is conducting his dialogue (or monologue?)

from the other world. As Felperin confirms, "The poem is not to be taken literally as an

account of actual walks in an around the city" (124). The expressions like 'the night,'

'the interrupted cry,' 'luminary clock,' and 'the time was neither wrong nor right' are all

suggestive and figurative expressions. As such they contain multiple meanings: the

literal, the figurative, the symbolic and the heuristic. But all the suggested meanings

drive home one simple conclusion from various angles that it prominently refers to 'the

dark night of the soul,' the dark night that emerges as a result of the "God's last put out

the light" (CP 314). If so, it is the dread of death that provoked Frost to conceive a

dependable myth which can lead humanity to realize the utter depravity of human

situation without faith. But ·at an unearthly height that may stand for heavenly height

there is 'One luminary clock against the sky' which proclaimed 'the time was neither

wrong nor right.' For Christians, Jesus is the light. The 'One luminary clock' is the

moon standing for Jesus. He is light; and he awards (eternal) life after the day of

judgment where onwards time would be 'neither wrong nor right,' it would be a moment

of eternal bliss. The note of anxiety comes to a blissful formula of eternal light and

eternal life, which becomes available to the redeemed after out-walking 'the farthest

(human) city light' and after 'acquainted with the night.'

If so, the 'signs' in the poem far surpass the literal meaning, which is the usual,

quality of myths as archetypes. Frost had always been haunted with metaphysics of death

and after. Since it is an insolvable riddle, in his poem "The Strong Are Saying Nothing,"

he arrives at a stand that "There may be little or much beyond the grave I The strong arc
 85

saying nothing until they see" (CP 391). The tentative mythical stand is 'There may be

little or much beyond the grave.' The tendency of Frost is called "Frostian reserve" by

Robert Pack (13). But it is more convincing to call it as Frost's sceptical Mythopoesis,

since it is not an intellectual reservation to be solved sometime in future. It is a riddle

without a solution. Therefore, in his poem "Away!" he lays down his mythic proposition

as follows (The poem is not there in the Complete Poems of Robert Frost, hence quoted

from Interviews with Robert Frost):

And I may return

If dissatisfied

With what I learn

From having died. (278)

This is the Biblical Lazarus in him that is speaking. Frost is quite light hearted and

humorous here for obvious reasons. But his faith in myths just for the poetic purpose

gives him such seeming contrary convictions. After all, mythopoesis is a matter of poetic

conviction and not an empirical reality. Frost had always believed that the empiricism is

not agreeable for poetry.

C. The Journey into One's Own Self

Most of the poetry of Robert Frost, more particularly his A Boy's Will was

composed with the assumption of a childlike innocence. Unlike in Blake and

Wordsworth, where a child is a unilateral assertion of his will (Child is the father of

man), in Robert Frost he is an agent who prefers to slip into the mystery of God's

creation with a colossal intention of seeking an oblivious confluence with the mystery

itself, sometimes like a fond cherisher and yet other times like a metaphysical protestor.
 86

His ardent passion is to dissect the mystery of things, without murdering or exposing the

very mystery.

This masquerading child of the mystery of human imagination tries to find for

himself a place and substance in the very grandeur of the illusion of reality where the

human reality itself off and on slips out its ugly head ever threatening and challenging the

oblique intensions of the poet to assume a sort of total obliviousness as one in many and

many in one. He, therefore, assumes upon himself certain concrete masks behind which

he establishes his rebellious metaphysical self.

The poem "Into My Own" is Robert Frost's archetypal manner of turning inward

into his own self symbolically suggesting at the dark problems of life. This manner of

taking a peep into inner concomitance of his personality puts him face to face with the

insurmountable spiritual problems. The dark trees, "So old and finn they scarcely show

the breeze" (CP 5) symbolically stand for the unbending manner in which his own

conscience stands firmly against him. He further clarifies that these dark trees are not

"the merest mask of gloom" (CP 5). It suggests that they are not at all the projects of

morbid imaginations.

In stating that they are "stretched away into the edge of doom" (CPS), Frost

reflects his spiritual apprehensions of the final doom of the whole universe one day or the

other. But then the expression 'the edge of doom' simultaneously suggests at the dooms-

day that is, the Day of Judgment. Since the dark problems of life should not be

visualized as insurmountable, he nurtures in himself a spiritual courage by a constant

regress of repeating for himself the words 'I should not be withheld.' He further

determines in himself and says 4 ~ •• that some day I Into their vastness I should steal
 87

away, I Fearless of ever-finding open land, I Or highway where the slow wheel pours the

sand" (CP 5).

The very idea of stealing into the vastness of dark trees suggests at the pantheistic

conviction born out of the primitive animism. The word 'Animism' is defined in the

Chamber's dictionary as 'The attribution of a soul to natural objects and phenomenon.'

Thus, G.E. Stahl enunciates his theory that soul is the vital principle and it is in continual

interaction with the natural objects and natural phenomenon. This clarifies Frost's idea

of stealing away into the dark trees. He means to imply that the old and firm trees which

'scarcely show the breeze' are not to be taken as lifeless entities. Again in stating that he

should remain 'fearless' of either the whole world turning into a desert (open land) 'Or

highway where the slow wheel pours the sand' (CP 5). The highway metaphor confirms

the Christian theological journey motive.

It is in the sestet that he recoups for himself a firm spiritual courage by way of

reassuring that there was no necessity for him to turn back or vacillate his mind with

unnecessary doubts. As a matter of fact since the trees are neither the masks of gloom

nor are they stretching away into the edge of doom, there is no need at all to fear about

the doom of the universe. As a true puritan he is convinced of his inner animation that

suggests to him that his own self is just like those dark trees which have in them a

spiritual permanence. They are, therefore, not born to die. As a matter of fact 'myself is

permanent here, and, therefore, there is nobody 'who should miss me here.' Nobody

need be anxious to know 'If still I hold them dear.' The last couplet ultimately confirms

his conviction, "They would not find me changed from him they knew I Only more sure

of all I thought was true" (CP 5).

 88

The dark trees that is, the dark insunnountable problems look on at the first

instance as merest mask of gloom and they appear to have been stretched on to the edge

of doom. The protagonist should not be withheld by the seeming appearances of the

gloom and the doom because he nurtures in himself a hope that he would one day

sublimate and identifY himself with the vastness of those dark trees. Here Frost

sacrosanctly depends upon the pantheistic formula that this great stubborn nature and the

human beings are interdependent and inseparable from each other.

Both the religionists and the naturalists are in the habit of constantly and

continually suggesting about the various possible manners in which everything comes to

an end. But somehow the Puritan conviction of Frost intimates him with the profound

animation that his inner self is born to be permanent in accordance with the primitive

animistic forces of everything in nature perennially renewing itself periodically. It

suggests at the idea that human self itself is a permanent entity without any destruction.

"Into My Own" is a Miltonic sonnet with three quatrains with rhyme scheme 'aa

bb cc dd ee ff' followed by a rhymed couplet. The sonnet makes a vigorous and

passionate introspective Puritan self-search in the sacrosanct and sincere manner of John

Milton.

The eternity of soul is a Pagan conviction. Frost does not seek that Christian

transport into the Heaven after the Day of Judgment. He prefers to remain in confluence

with the state of nature in whatever manner it would be possible. It is in this sense that

the poem emerges out of the aetiological allegory of nature or the essential causation of

being-in-the-world. The final line of the poem strikes a note of sly humour in stating that

the trees would become convinced on 'more sure of all I thought was true.' What else
 89

would they think after having such delicious nourishment on the poet's being in the

grave?

This is the Frostian manner of poetically establishing the permanence of being-in-

the-world; and it smacks of his child-like scepticism and belief in pagan Heaven in the

sense of life being eternal and suspicion of the Christian's journey into the Heaven with

the help of the Son of God.

The poet is intending to steal himself away into the vastness of the mighty and

courageous expansion of the 'dark trees,' without any fear of coming face to face with a

desert land, or a cultured and civilized area ('highway' being a tracked path established

by the rapacious humans after due destruction of the trees), "Into their vastness I should

steal away, I Fearless of ever finding open land, I Or highway where the slow wheel

pours the sand" (CP 5).

The life in a civilized culture is a matter of mechanical repetitive manner of

subsistence through vexing mimesis or imitation, hence 'the slow wheel pours the sand.'

The ultimate outcome of all the culture and civilization is as good as useless sand poured

forth by the slow grinding wheels of time as a mechanical repetitive entity, without any

joy or jest oflife left any more.

Stealing into the vastness of the 'dark trees' is the poet's secret manner of

sympathetically emulating the courageous and fearless massive state of the trees. In

secretly stealing himself into the vastness of the trees, there is that joy of achieving for

himself the vastness (or greatness?) of the trees, a profound heroic sentiment like that of

the Greek mythological heroes, say, Ulysses.

The Ulysses-like undaunted show of villain on the part of the child-like character

of the protagonist is delicately ironic and humorous. The poet confirms the idea when he
 90

says that the trees ultimately set forth upon his track to overtake him. There is that

metaphysical mythical trope here according to which the verdure or the 'dark trees' grow

out of the graves also where men are buried. Even if he gets merged into the elemental

properties of nature, he would ultimately find himself overtaken by the trees.

1. Spiritual Insights

It is in the "Directive," his most famous major poem of later years, that Frost

celebrates the ultimate canonical purpose of the journey myth. For him the canonical

purpose figuratively stands for 'poetic purpose,' which in itself is the human purpose

also. Here, as well as in A Masque of Mercy and A masque of Reason, Frost directly

borrows the Christo logical spiritual compactness of the Holy Bible. Frost's substantial

purpose here, as well as all through his poetry, being spiritual insights through

enchantment and dramatic discussion, the direct invocation to the Biblical passages

enacts the most needful spiritual exultation. This spiritual exultation, as in "The Road

Not Taken," just indicates rather than summating or analogising the Biblical myths.

While the poetical use of the myths here is evocative and elusive, the aesthetic joy of

delicately but assuredly perceiving the content of human spiritual bearings through

indirections is cognate with the Eastern processes of yogic interiorization through the

effort of holding the life-giving 'breath' in the supreme heights. Poetically speaking, this

'breath' in Robert Frost is his unique manner of aesthetically holding the interior cave of

the myths, leaving their structural particulars to be apprehended by the reader in

accordance with his acquaintance with the concerned myths.

The major poetic credentials become explicit towards the end of the poem:

I have kept hidden in the instep arch

Of an old cedar at the waterside

 91

A broken drinking goblet like the Grail

Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,

So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.

(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse)

Here are your waters and your watering place

Drink and be whole again beyond confusion. (CP 521)

Until this end point the reader is in a constant doubt whether Frost means any

serious 'Directive' or he is just fooling through verbal quibbles. Frost poetically re-

enacts a ritual, with an explicit and earnest instruction :one must drink from "A brook

that was the water of the house" from "A broken drinking goblet" that was stolen by his

guide from "the children's house of make believe I Some shattered dishes underneath a

pine" (CP 521 ). Marie Boroff enviably sununates the ritual in the following words:

The meaning of the ritual must be inferred in part from the serious images,

present throughout the poem, in which natural process of attribution and

obliteration-including, on a grand scale, the geological process embodied

in the glacier- are seen as working against, and eventually defeating

man's efforts to maintain life in an inhospitable setting - a favourite

subject of Frost's. (80)

The effort of Boroff, as a committed naturalist-turned-linguist, in sununating

Frost's purpose is in suggesting 'the geological process embodies in the glacier ... as

working against, and eventually defeating man's efforts to maintain life in an

inhospitable setting'. Boroff blinkers her critical vision and obliterates the canonical

mythic profundity of the imagery. The overall excessive modern secularism, American

pragmatism, the structuralist's overall exclusive emphasis on practical criticism, or what

 92

they call in America 'New Criticism,' had done a great harm to the mytho-poetic

credentials of the most classical of the classical poets of our times called Robert Frost.

Marie Boroff, after copiously acknowledging the Biblical mythical foundations of Frost's

poetry by way of allusions to the New Testament, arrives at the so-called blunt American

pragmatic stand: "Yet the message itself (of "Directive"), it must be insisted, is not

Christian. The revelations the poem brings is moral mther than supernatural, its source is

not a divine incarnation but a secular figure, the poet, who, although his garments may

resemble the priest, belongs to the realm of human experience and memory" (80).

Marie Boroff is not alone in exclusively insisting upon the so-called secular

modernism in art and poetry of the twentieth century. Almost all the practical critics in

England and the New critics in America adumbrated themselves in the sceptical secularist

garments, forgetting the fact that the whole history of mankind is a close knit connected

whole, and the ancient classical myths are as much relevant as the modernist myths of

industrialism, secularism, and pragmatism for our times. Boroff speaks as though the

expressions 'his garments may resemble the priest's' and 'the realm of human experience

and memory' are exclusive of and contradictory to each other.

The so called modem fashions of critical idiom, in being ruthlessly critical,

oppositional, and sceptical towards the overall 'realm of human experience and memory,'

of the entirety of human race, has done an irreparable damage to the text, tone, and

texture of the poets of our times, more particularly to Robert Frost. Frost is as much a

great poet as T. S. Eliot in comprehending the 'tradition and individual talent.' The

Greco-Roman and the Judaeo-Christian mytho-poetic bearings in Frost are as abundant !I!'

they are in the poetry ofT. S. Eliot.

 93

By invoking the influence of ancient myths in the symbols, imagery, and poetry

as a momentary stay against confusion, there has to be a greater understanding of Robert

Frost as a poet. In fact what else the ancient myths are if they are not 'a momentary stay

against confusion.' Thus, the very definition of the poetry of Robert Frost takes its roots

in the mytho-poetic essences of the past. Jung's concept of collective unconscious is a

certain fact in moulding the modem man's thought and action. The collective

unconscious is a curious blend of fictions and myths about the human historical past.

Frost's stylistic manner suits his poetic profundity of myth making itself through

denial. The concluding passage of his "Directive" further confirms this stylistic novelty

of Frost's simultaneous poetic strategy of myth-recreation and myth-de-creation at a time.

While suggestively and de-creatively pointing at the Grail myth as confirmed by St. Mark

in the Bible, Frost recreates the whole myth through the metaphor of child's destroyed

playhouse. From whole reminiscent destroyed spoils, a broken bowl could be brought

back and the medicinal waters could be drunk. In an ultimate analysis, Frost wants to

suggest that the original purpose of St. Mark's myth has to be revived or re-constructed to

save and redeem the humans.

Here the suggestion is of the modern age tenninally sick of its own doings, and

only directive that could be given is in the most needful proposition of becoming pure as

children at play again and gain the faith in humanity, by way of curing medicinal waters

from the childishly hidden goblet. Even if it is a broken one it does not matter, for faith

in humanity through drinking medicinal waters at all is the urgent necessity.

This is Frost's myth of the need of recovering faith for humanity. This is an

affirmation by an act of denial. This courage-to-be in world comes only through what

Keats called 'Negative Capability' that is to remain unshattered in the very presence of
 94

difficulties, doubts, and mysteries. Only child-like exclusive perceptual sensibility

devoid of grown-ups' conceptual predilections can save humanity from the impeding

ultimate peril, devastation, and destruction.

Frost arrives at a positive assertion to involve with the whole human race, starting

from the mythological times. The poem ends with an invitation 'Drink and be whole

again beyond confusion.' The stress on 'again' confirms that the whole humanity was

once a 'whole' with such predominance of what Northrop Frye calls 'Primary concerns.'

He supports his thesis by an allusion to St. Mark that precedes the end with the following

lines:

I have kept hidden in the instep arch

Of an old cellar at the waterside

A broken drinking goblet like the Grail

Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,

So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't. (CP 521)

The reference to the Grail legend and St. Mark's indictment (Mark 4:11,12) are

the possible evidences of his mytho-poetic comprehension of the entire humanity, which

is a march on a circular road that touches the starting point again and again in the course

of its journey. The words of Herbert Mark are worth quoting in this context: "Frost,

however, is a poet of 'counter-love,' for whom the supreme fiction has not to be

imagined but discovered- and not in ostentatious isolation, but 'whether together or

apart' in inevitable league with others" (143).

This 'inevitable league with others' invariably goes back to the primeval

mythological times. Wallace Stevens always insisted that the 'supreme fiction· (May we

say supreme myth?) has to be 'imagined' in secular isolations of our times. But Frost
 95

surmises that it can be invoked by working 'whether together or apart' with the whole

humanity right from its primitive starts.

Back out of all this now too much for us,

Back in a time made simple by the loss

Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off

Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,

There is a house that is no more a house

Upon a farm that is no more a farm

And in a town that is no more a town. (CP 520)

The expression 'this now too much for us' has Wordsworthian agony expressed in

his sonnet "The World is Too Much With Us." This 'too much with us' is a phenomenon

in our times because of our wilful isolation from the human past. In the case of

Wordsworth it is the separation from comforting nature; and in Frost it is the wilful act of

carving for us a separate identity as against the 'whole' course of humanity.

In the above lines Herbert Mark finds a "secularized paradox ... at the heart of

the sublime tradition in English and American poetry" (143). In spite of abundant

internal evidence to show that Frost as a poet worked in tandem with the ancient myths,

the so-called practical or the New critics foreclose themselves from endorsing the mytho-

poetic credentials of Robert Frost. Any sacramental readings of his poems, somehow,

inhibit them. But Frost himself is defining poetry as 'A momentary stay against

confusion,' a strategic poetic formula which he elicited from the Greco-Roman and the

Judaeo-Christian myths, re-dedicates himself to the poetic essences, both ancient and

modem. In his "The Constant Symbol," Frost says, "Every poem is an epitome of the

great predicament; a figure of the will braving alien entanglement" (xv). While the
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'supreme fiction' of Wallace Stevens has to be created by imagination, the figure (myth?)

a poem makes, has to be created by 'will braving alien entanglement.' The word 'alien'

implies entanglement with inimical environment.

The 'graveyard marble sculpture' symbol, which sustained damage due to

weathering, speaks for Frost's emotional attachment to the human prehistoric past. In

spite of the fact that it is 'a time made simple by the loss I Of detail, burned, dissolved,

and broken off,' its prominent echoes can be found even in our so called secular age

which stands in a great self-doubt.

The "Directive" is Frost's mytho-poetic sacrament that can be read as his

programme to carry humanity beyond its fallen state. This programme of Frost should

not be mistaken as a practical solution for the evils of our times. He just pleads for a

change in the mindset of modem man in equipping himself more and more with the

primary concerns, by way of taking the initial instructions for the ancient myths.

The Apollonian and the Dionysian contradictm:y impulses that rocked the mind of

Nietzsche are prominently at work in Frost's "Directive." Apollonian stands for

permanence, and Dionysian stands for change. But Frost believes that these two

tendencies are simultaneously present as two antithetical dispositions. Frost's project is

for permanence through change. The present is 'too much with us,' and the past which

includes the ancient mythological times, is 'made simple by the loss of detail, burned,

dissolved, and broken off.' The mythological past, with all its magnificence and human

content has been rendered into nothingness (made simple), and the forces that contributed

for this nothingness of the past are the far too enthusiastic Dionysian impulses that

hastened man to precipitate volatile changes and in the historical process to suit his

temporal whims and fancies of comfort.

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It is only through strict obedience to the Apollonian impulses that stand for

permanence through religion, law and morality, that can revive back the old order in

order to "be whole again beyond confusion" (CP 521). In his theory of Greek tragedy

and Greek life, Nietzsche found that (in the words of H. L. Mencken) "all mankind might

be divided into two classes; the Apollonian who stood for permanence, the Dionysian

who stood for change" (qtd. in Richardson 1). If so, Robert Frost is a strange amalgam of

both these impulses. He is after permanence through a drastic change and alteration in

the mind of man, especially towards the historical past. The past is not there to be

destroyed and thrown out. It is then to be regained and recaptured through poetry. Hence

he appreciates and emulates the ancient myths.

Frost's straight forward 'Directive' here is that the right ones should search 'the

broken drinking goblet like the grail' which he had 'kept hidden in the instep arch I Of an

old cedar of the waterside.' The fundamental difference between myths and other forms

of writing is in the myths being exclusively in figurative language. The allusion to the

Holy Grail is explicit here. Frost creates a parallel myth of broken goblet. He says that

he had thieved it from 'the children's playhouse.' The figurative dimensions here

propose a special sublime appeal. What all Frost means to suggest here is that his own

poetry figuratively stands for that 'broken goblet.' He is imploring us to drink the

medicinal waters and 'be whole again beyond confusion.' Present day man is awfully

confused after being vertically fractured between Apollonian and Dionysian impulses.

It is only a poetical confluence of these two impulses that can bring the most

required human order, with absolute concern for the primary essences of life. The

Dionysian with its programme of radical change has to re-inculcate in man a proper

vision towards the life-giving forces of the past. These life-giving forces arc well
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entrenched in the ancient myth. It is the exclusive figurative nature of language that

becomes his poetic programme and theory in his "The Figure a Poem Makes."

The children's playhouse myth is very important here. In the significant manner

of William Blake, Frost visualizes the whole humanity in the figure of 'children's play

house' and invites the inmates for spiritual hide and seek (kept hidden) in a secularist

vocabulary. The brokenness of the 'drinking goblet' like 'the grail' needs no great

critical comment that in our agnostic secularist times (May we say, as in America, the

'pragmatic times?') the Biblical spiritual serenity as a faith sustained an irreparable

damage and that damage can be repaired if only we can assume upon ourselves the

Biblical cherubic childlikeness and re-capture the lost faith in all and seriousness. This is

the exact poetically declared 'Directive'. Where Wallace Stevens pleaded for the

necessity of the humans becoming 'Primitives again.', Frost just reiterates the Blakian

formula of assuming the innocence of the childhood. In both the cases the intended

purpose is the same. It is in the most needful extrication of humanism from the clutches

of modernism.

Frost's poem, which otherwise runs in the manner of small talk, acquires a great

spiritual leap and seriousness with the mention of Saint Mark. In this sudden Biblical

stroke the poem gains a great spiritual finale in serenity, which, of course, is the whole

purpose of the 'Directive.' In the very serious tone of the poem, until it comes to the

point of 'child's playhouse' metaphor, is Frost's manner of deploring the great loss that

humanity sustained in adopting for itself the so called Apollonian and Dionysian

impulses leaving the Christian impulses for themselves.

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2. Path-Finding

Robert Frost's "Riders" is a poem in which he mythopoetically suggests the

hopeless state of our being-in-the-world quite blindly. But we have intuitive ideas that

can give us a leap into being-in-the-universe. We are such none too successful riders

who perform ourselves as a confused lot posing to be great 'guides' or heroes that pave

the ways. We are small arrogant people stuffed with what the ancient Greeks called

hubris 'self pride.' We presume ourselves to be pathfinders on earth, sea, and even air.

But the real 'talked of mystery of birth' is our being born as helpless just-born children

'being mounted bareback on the earth', that is born quite helpless.

What all we can see is the infant with outstretched hand upwards, with 'His small

fist buried in the bushy hide' that is, his hand submerged in the mystery of life. The

poem affirms that the mystery of life is absolutely not revealable, even with all the pride

of our being. It is in the third and last stanza Robert Frost resorts to the wildest

mythmaking. The earth is characterised here in the metaphor of "a headless horse" (CP

345), standing for our blind being-in-the-world.

Our 'wildest mount.', that is our real ride, is on this earth which "runs unbridled

off its course" (CP 345). The astronomical mass called earth always runs in its own

course. Then on the 'wildest mount- a headless horse' must be that human nature itself.

And then the whole metaphorical expression is the likeness of the manner in which the

ancient Greeks talked of the perfect mastery in the Daedalus and Icarus myth.

Resemblance to Daedalus and Icarus myth is obliquely analogous.

Daedalus made what he thought to be a perfect foolproof machine. Icarus tried to

fly wearing the wings fastened on with the wax (the machine made by DaedaluS]. He

soared too high, and reached near the Sun. The wax melted and the wings fell awav. and
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Icarus tumbled into the sea and was drowned. Hence all our blandishments concerning

our heroism are defied. It does not matter, ' we have ideas yet that we haven't tried.'

Hope alone is our real horse, even if a 'headless' one.

Frostian metaphysics, envisaged through the symbolic eclectic unification of the

seemingly divergent (even antagonistic) traditional myths and symbols, evokes a hwnan

sense of understanding the very metaphysics of life and death, which remains an alluding

secret from the grasp of man. The poems of Frost that reveal the secret of the

metaphysics oflife and death have been dealt with in the next chapter.