In the
poem 'Desert Places' by Robert Frost we have a lovely description in the first stanza.
It is not only the snow falling, but the night too, and speed is referenced - it is
happening quickly. The poet looks into a fiied to see it covered in snow - he makes special
mention that the weeds and last years cereal stubble are the last to get covered by the
smoothness.
He sees the woods as owning the snow which has smothered all
animals which may get hemmed in it because of the nature of their homes 'lairs.'
Next he makes mention of emotions 'loneliness' and 'absent-spirited' - he has
unwittingly become part of the scene. He envisages that loneliness becoming deeper as time
passes - so deep perhaps as it touches on the more serious nature of the blankness of feeling
associated with depression. The loneliness is exacerbated by the inability to communicate
thoughts and feelings.
Frost sees the lonely spaces including skies as
presenting a threat posed by someone else. Outer space is the extreme of alone-ness as there ,
there is not even another human soul.
The power to excommunicate, to isolate
oneself, is stronger Frost feels, inside his own personality. Possibly alluding to depressing
feelings, he sees these inner issues as having greater power to isolate than nature itself. The
word 'desert' here is used in terms of 'desolate' rather than 'hot.' Frost himself had succumbed
to the refuge of 'running away' during his lifetime - a link referencing that is included
here:
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