Carol Ashey

ENGL 232 K
Dr. Theado
3-6-2013
RR3
Nature Upon the Mind
Most of Robert Frosts poems discuss nature in some way or use them in imagery.
Considering he lived on a farm, this makes sense. I happen to like the imagery in his poems
Nothing Gold Can Stay, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, and Desert Places, as
well as the emotions they evoke and the tones they set.
The first image that came to mind when I read Nothing Gold Can Stay was a scene
from the book The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, of the characters Johnny and Ponyboy looking out
at the early morning landscape from the church in all its beauty and saddened by the fact that it
wouldnt last. I think that is often true; what man often finds most beautiful is also often fleeting.
In light of that, I also think that the poem is about the season of autumn, specifically in lines
three through six: Her early leafs a flower; but only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So
Eden sank to grief. Those lines made me think of the changing leaves of autumn, how they
begin green, then have their golden hour when the weather is cooler and the colors are bright,
but then fade and dull as winter draws nearer. In my opinion, autumn is the prettiest of all the
seasons, yet it is also the shortest, not unlike the poem. While the poem itself is short and looks
small on the page, its meaning is so very big.

The image that came to my mind in Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, was
that of a young man riding his horse home and stopping near the woods of a neighbor at night,
which I think is clear and cold, his breath coming in puffs. I picture the trees being tall and
scraggly, with dustings of snow on their trunks and clumps along the branches. I can hear the
tinkling of the harness bells. I can feel the silence as the rider watches the snow fall in big flakes
in the woods.
The tone that comes to my mind is solitude, finding peace and quiet in the deep woods,
alone with the snow, capturing its beauty otherwise ignored by the minds rush to get home or
other people. I think Frost wrote this poem as a means of remembering the beauty of a winter
night outside before he reaches the warm fires of home.
Desert Places reminded me of cabin fever. The tone of the poem seems to create a
sense of restlessness and slight insanity at being kept inside for so long. I found it interesting that
the title involves the word desert which usually conjugates images of hot, dry, sandy places;
instead the poem talks of snow, a desert in its own right by the way it covers everything, much
like sand does. What I found interesting is the end of the poem, where Frost says They cannot
scare me with their empty spaces between the starsI have it in meto scare myself with my
own desert places. While the thought of being snowed in is definitely terrifying, there are
always worse things that could happen.