Poetry Acquainted With the Night Analysis & Summary by Robert Frost
To view Summary & Analysis of other poems. Click Here.
Analysis
Acquainted with the Night is a sonnet. Frost has experimented with the form of a sonnet by fusing the rhyme scheme, terza rima. This complex rhyme scheme was invented by Dante for his work "Divine Comedy."
In terza rima, the first and third lines rhyme while the second line rhymes with the first and third lines of the next stanza. This interlocking pattern makes this rhyming scheme too hard to be attempted by poets. The scheme is ABA BCB CDC DAD AA.
The rhyme scheme of the poem is tied with the images and ideas expressed in the poem. The stanzas progress from simple realistic description to complex and abstract ideas. Unlike Shakespeare who put the condensed idea in the last two lines of his sonnet, Frost deals in a simpler way but the form remains that of a sonnet.
William Blake has expressed a similar narration of this poem in his poem "London." He wrote, "I wander thro' each charter'd street, near where the charter'd Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet, marks of weakness, marks of woe." Frost expresses something very similar but lonelier.
The use of the word "acquainted" here is loaded with dual sense. It tells us that the narrator has knowledge about the night but it is not an intimate knowledge. It has a kind of detachment that comes from sadness.
The narrator is expressing his lonely human state which is common to all of us. Whether his loneliness comes from society or it is self-imposed, one cannot say.
The narrator wanders alone. Here, the loneliness at night is almost existential. The phenomenon is urban because the poet describes streets and city lights. When the poet writes "I have been one acquainted with the night‘", we get to know that the person has gone through a long time like this to finally declare about his familiarity with night.
The narrator is reflecting upon himself. It is not mere solitude but loneliness. When one is solitary, one enjoys but when one feels loneliness, it means he is sad. His state of isolation represents all of humanity.
All of us are waiting for someone to call to take part in our life. Here, the narrator stops while walking and, in such silence, a cry comes from the next street and the narrator laments that it is not a cry to call him or say him goodbye but some anonymous cry.
After the middle part of the poem, we confront abstract ambiguities. Why the narrator was not willing to explain anything to the watchman? The luminary clock is not described precisely in the poem. It does comment upon the passage of time. Nature doesn't judge the way we human beings judge.
So, the luminary clock proclaimed that the time was neither wrong nor right. Once we are acquainted with the loneliness which is common to all of us no matter what the condition of our life is, we will see that the world is indifferent to this existential condition of ours.
When looked closely, we can only look into ourselves. We have no full knowledge of anything else. We interpret the world according to our mood which the narrator in this poem does too. We can only describe our familiarity.
Summary
Introduction
"Acquainted with the Night" is a poem written by the American poet Robert Frost. It was first published in 1927 in the magazine "Virginia Quarterly Review." The poem primarily meditates on the isolation of a lonely person.
Unlike other poems of Frost where the setting is mostly a country-side is, this poem portrays the urban scenario. It can also be seen as one of the "journey poems" written by Frost. The degree of comfort which the narrator has with his isolation is ambiguous.
As a sonnet, it has 14 lines divided into 5 stanzas. The meter is iambic pentameter. The poem is largely discussed by critics in comparison to Dante's Inferno because of its rhyming scheme which is "terza rima." The rhyming pattern was created by Dante. It is also known as "interlocking rhyme."
Stanza 1
The poem begins as a soliloquy. The narrator expresses his awareness of the night and its true nature. When he says that he is acquainted with the night, it feels like his familiarity has a sort of disenchantment. The rain has multiplied one's loneliness.
The narrator has confronted it fully as he has walked out in rain, and back in rain. Embracing his loneliness, he has walked too long. He has walked so long that he outwalked the furthest city light. Here, the isolation is that of an urban man. The narrator has reached where the city ends.
Stanza 2
The night is full of sadness for the narrator. He is projecting his inner state unto the city lane when he says that he has looked down the saddest city lane. He walks past the watchman and drops his eyes.
Frost was a very shy person. He looks down so that he won't have to explain anything to the watchman. It is not his incapacity that he can't explain, rather he is unwilling to explain. He is not in a mood. He is too sad for any human conversation.
Stanza 3
The narrator is idle. He is describing that while walking somewhere he stopped. It was so silent that while walking the only sound which came was from his own feet. So, it also stopped. In the city, there are people everywhere. The silence is interrupted when a cry came from the neighboring street.
Stanza 4
The narrator had stopped with anticipation after listening a cry from the other street. But it was not meant for him. In his loneliness, he is probably waiting for any human to contact him.
No cry was calling him back or saying good-bye. He must have looked towards the sky. He saw that there was one luminary clock against the sky at an unearthly height. One may simply say that it was the moon. Or it is the idea of time. Here, the poem asks us to explore its depth.
Stanza 5
That luminary clock proclaimed that the time was neither wrong nor right. Frost often shows the indifference of Nature towards the feeling of human beings.
Such a moment put an individual into contemplation. Such a feeling has come from the narrator's innermost loneliness. It is humanity's place in the universe.
