"Bereft" by Robert Frost
In which I return from a backpacking trip and get all august about August
Bereft Where had I heard this wind before Change like this to a deeper roar? What would it take my standing there for, Holding open a restive door, Looking downhill to a frothy shore? Summer was past and day was past. Somber clouds in the west were massed. Out in the porch's sagging floor Leaves got up in a coil and hissed, Blindly struck at my knee and missed. Something sinister in the tone Told me my secret must be known: Word I was in the house alone Somehow must have gotten abroad, Word I was in my life alone, Word I had no one left but God. from West-Running Brook (1928)
Is Robert Frost my favourite poet? Maybe! “Bereft” is, without doubt, a favourite poem, another one that’s taken up residence inside of me, though its music and meter make its presence a shifting one: it whistles and slips around the spine, between the ribs. It’s a fine companion for a week spent rolling over and down the quartzite domes of La Cloche Silhouette, especially if that week includes the last day of August and the first of September, ever one of my favourite liminal moments, and especially now that it doesn’t also signal, for me, the sudden shift from not-school to school, late summer leisure to the big books of fall and their attendant demands.
This newsletter takes its title from Frost’s 1939 essay “The Figure a Poem Makes”:
It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.
I love the starts and stops of the syntax, how the passage finds its way, enacting the idea it aims to express. It’s a perfect encapsulation of certain modes of lyric, and it’s been with me even longer than “Bereft.” The mission is a humble one, worth keeping close: a poem need not solve the world’s problems. It’s enough just to get to the next landmark, the next red triangle on the map, and have yourself a rest.1
August-into-September in the La Cloche range means, blessedly, no mosquitoes nor flies, black or horse; highs in the seventies and lows in the mid-forties; an abundance of migrating birds—and wind. Wind! Fitting to have the veritable wind machine that is “Bereft” marking time. Alongside the rolling movement of the trochaic tetrameter2, Frost’s utterly kooky patterned-but-make-it-unpatterned rhyme scheme and obsessive internal rhyme whip up a sonic cyclone of truly haunting proportions.
We begin with a sudden gust in the interrogative mode, “Where” demanding an answer of us, the past perfect “had I heard” rushing up against the demonstrative adjective “this”: we are in both the past and the present, neither there nor here, as the poem begins. Between the hard stresses (caps) and internal rhyme (bold), it’s already getting loud:
WHERE had I HEARD this WIND beFORE
The second line gives some solace in the form of specificity—we discover we are seeking clarity regarding a single quality—and the reassuring click of a hard end rhyme and matching pattern of stresses:
CHANGE like THIS to a DEEPer ROAR.
When it comes to repetition, two occurrences may simply be a satisfying coincidence: a third instance feels intentional. Thus following two four-beat lines ending FORE / ROAR with another tetrameter question, this one ending FOR—not just another instance of the A rhyme, but a perfect rhyme with the first line—introduces a vague sense of control. ‘Vague’ because the syntax here is garbled and the dominant trochaic meter yields to the longer dactylic3 foot.
So we have a speaker who starts out somewhat wildly, in a panicked mode, then settles into a rhythm, only to force the third line to match . . . and then things start to get really creepy, with not only a fourth, but then a fifth line ending on the A rhyme. This is just not normal: we are fixated on the same sound, on a rhythm that drives along somewhat recklessly, and who, by the way, is the “it” taking our speaker for anything—the wind??
WHAT would it TAKE me STANDing there FOR
HOLDing Open a REStive DOOR
LOOKing downHILL to a FROTHy SHORE?
We get respite from the A rhyme, at last, in line six and seven, as Frost introduces a B rhyme in PAST / MASSED, but our friend A is back in line eight’s FLOOR. Too, all three lines carry a hard internal rhyme that anticipates the end rhymes:
SUMmer was PAST and DAY was PASSED.
SOMber CLOUDS in the WEST were MASSED.
OUT in the PORCH’s SAGGing FLOOR
In lines nine and ten, another couplet, the B rhyme plays in a minor key with HISSED / MISSED:
LEAVES got UP in a COIl and HISSED
BLINDly STRUCK at my KNEE and MISSED.
Line eleven, more than halfway through the poem, we encounter a true C rhyme, with TONE echoed in twelve by KNOWN . . . and then, oh no, it’s back in thirteen’s ALONE, completing another triplet we anticipate may metastasize like the A rhyme that opened in the poem. But instead we’re whipped around another corner, into another slant—or is this a D rhyme in ABROAD?
SOMEthing SINister IN the TONE
TOLD me my SECret MUST be KNOWN:
WORD I was IN the HOUSE aLONE
SOMEhow MUST have GOTTen aBROAD,
In any case, we’re back to undoubtedly hard rhymes as the penultimate line opens with the perfect rhyme of WORD and ends with the perfect rhyme of ALONE:
WORD I was IN my LIFE aLONE,
To this point, the system of end rhyme looks something like this:
A (before)
A (roar)
A (for)
A (door)
A (shore)
B (past)
B (massed)
A (floor)
B (hissed)
B (missed)
C (tone)
C (known)
C (alone)
D? (abroad)
C (alone)
What should we expect, heading into the last line of this weird little lyric? Logic would dictate a D rhyme—we’ve not yet encountered a line without an echo. But what we get, depending on how hard you’d like to lean on the flat vowels of Uncle Robbie’s faux–New Englander accent, isn’t really a D rhyme, let alone A or B or C: it’s GOD:
WORD I had NO one LEFT but GOD.
Yeesh! If ever I have felt discomfited by the mention of God, it’s right now, with the O sound shifting from the middle vowel of ABROAD, cradled comfortably in the center of the tongue, to back vowel, dropping down into the throat with GOD.
But I’d argue that’s not even the scariest bit, which requires visual representation. If we zoom out and look at the poem’s dominant sounds as represented by the end rhyme, which we’ve seen are also echoed in internal rhyme, we see the poem is structured around O and S sounds: a wind that moans, and a wind that hisses, quite literally in line nine; a wind that is a long way off and one that’s snuck up behind you to whisper right in your ear. Look at the way the sibilance slithers through, only to drop out in the last line, where we also lose the certainty of a hard end rhyme:
In a line without a whisper, this one, ironically, turns the volume all the way down and whispers the poem to its utterly unsettled ending.
August! When the remains of high summer linger on, but there’s a sudden briskness on the breeze. It’s a long way off, sure, but it’s coming, and it will be here before you know it. What will you have left when it arrives?
I’d love to know:
What’s your favourite liminal moment?
What’s your favourite Frost poem?
If you hate Frost poems, how dare you?
And if you enjoyed this post, please like yourself, share whatever you can with whomever you can share it, and subscribe to the universe . . .
And a swim, a NUUN tablet, a litre of water, a few hundred grams of peanut noodles, and maybe some Junior Mints.
Trochee being the opposite of the more familiar iamb: STRESSED-unstressed; tetrameter meaning four stressed syllables per line.
Dactyl being a STRESSED-unstressed-unstressed pattern. A student once gave me a superb mnemonic: “Oh, okay, like a pterodactyl swoops down and whacks you with its beak, then once with each wing.”