Nature is all around us and we are bound by it unpredictable transformations. Robert Frost finds the beauty of nature, yet is quite aware of its fickleness. Nature is a mundane detail that we rarely take time to appreciate and sometimes take for granted its tendency to constantly make the world beautiful. In many of Frost’s poems about nature, he recognizes the beauty of nature, but is also bewildered and sometimes saddened by its continuous change. Frost’s poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, portrays the idea of nature being a life force throughout all of time.
Nature is constantly showing us her beauty, but he reminds us that from each day to the next, nothing can be a permanent fixture all the time. In “A Boundless Moment,” Frost is so attracted to nature’s cycle, that he defies what nature ought to do, by creating a leaf that is clinging on to a tree, but the reader knows that this cannot be and soon it will fall off like the rest of the leaves. We do not know when, but this abnormality cannot continue, it must change. ““Desert Places” shows more of Frost’s emotions and deals with the natural progression of life.
When the narrator realizes that the snow is covering all of the ground he becomes aware that nature is no longer alive or present in his midst. Frost is saddened with this idea of death and expresses the true loneliness of life. “Spring Pools” portrays this same image of death, but it is almost a continuation to “Desert Places,” because it provides hope with the “snow that melted only yesterday. ” It considers the better aspects of life and that being the end of a cold winter, and the beginning of a beautiful spring.
The regeneration of the world is wonderful, and provides the insight that nothing lasts forever without going through a series of changes and constant growing and maturing. ““Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a much happier and more upbeat poem. This poem is about stopping to enjoy life or as the adage goes, stopping to smell the roses. ‘ “But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. ” The speaker in this poem was a very busy man who always had obligations to fulfill and places to go.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is the opposite of “Desert Places. ” The settings where exactly the same, both being calm, dark, wintry evenings, but they express totally different feelings. Desert Places is a very depressing poem with a dark tone. The other is very happy, and it makes you wish that winter were already here. These two poems are very different, but they are also the same in some ways. They show two extremes of the same emotion. Being alone can be positive or negative. It just depends on the state of mind.
Loneliness can be very depressing, or it can be a time to collect your thoughts without the pressures of the outside world crashing down. Winter is the perfect season to reflect upon when expressing solitude. Frost personifies nature in human terms and points out the many ways in which what happens with an individual is a reflection of what happens throughout nature. Nature is the process that can insightfully bring about personal reflection, and Frost uses this to reveal the splendor and wonder of nature’s frivolity.
