Hi all.First, sorry about the dumb question, i need a little help with Robert Frost and 'I wonder about the trees...' The thing I was wondering about is the phrase 'Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand' What does it mean. Thank you for the help in advance
What do you think of this poem (btw it is called 'Into My Own')? The metaphor of trees, woods, jungle, forests recur constantly in American Literature in general and Frost's poetry in particular. Wheel and sand are metaphors for what? Wheel of what? Sands of ...? Sorry I am only trying to get your imagination racing here. Don't want to do your homework for you but if you want a discussion on this poem then be my guest. Eventually 'we' will understand the poem.Originally Posted by GeorgeSpiriev
Hi all.First, sorry about the dumb question, i need a little help with Robert Frost and 'I wonder about the trees...' The thing I was wondering about is the phrase 'Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand' What does it mean. Thank you for the help in advance
The Woods are lovely dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Last edited by Kafka's Crow; 01-24-2008 at 02:44 PM.
"The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the sh1t the more I am grateful to him..."
-- Harold Pinter on Samuel Beckett
Are sand and wheel symbols of time? Could this wheel be a part of a cart, a word often used by Frost when he talks about one's life and work? Or maybe a wheel is a part of some kind of a machine making roads? My question was if it is a metaphore or something real that can be used as a metaphore. Sorry about the mistake, i hope Frost will forgive me
There can be no Frost without metaphor. Yes sands are the sands of time, wheel the wheel of machine, both suggesting modern life. In American literature, trees are often used as the metaphor for uncertain, unchartered, 'virgin' territory, full of terror, uncertainty but that is where 'acres of diamonds' are.
INTO MY OWN (from A Boy's Will1915)
ONE of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day 5
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track 10
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew—
Only more sure of all I thought was true.
As usual it can be read in at least two ways:
a) an escape from days and ways of men (i-e modern life)
b) an American poem about exploration of the unknown and thirst for new experience.
I am sure the second reading is more accurate and rewarding.
"The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the sh1t the more I am grateful to him..."
-- Harold Pinter on Samuel Beckett
Thank you very much. In fact i am doing a translation of some of Frost's poems in Bulgarian. The problem was if i can replace the word 'wheel' with 'cart' or 'car' because of the rhyme. Thank you once again.
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