WEBVTT 00:01.690 --> 00:06.830 Professor Langdon Hammer: We talked on Monday 00:06.834 --> 00:13.194 about Frost's idea of "the sound of sense" and vernacular speech 00:13.189 --> 00:18.839 forms, his wish to put these in tension or, as he put it, 00:18.838 --> 00:23.678 "strained relation" with metrical pattern. 00:23.680 --> 00:29.280 The primary metrical pattern in Frost is the primary metrical 00:29.284 --> 00:34.514 pattern in English poetry, which is to say blank verse or 00:34.514 --> 00:37.414 unrhymed iambic pentameter. 00:37.410 --> 00:41.500 Well, meter: what is meter? 00:41.500 --> 00:46.220 Meter is--it's a scheme for organizing verse, 00:46.218 --> 00:49.648 for organizing lines of verse. 00:49.650 --> 00:57.220 It's a scheme that in English counts accents or stresses per 00:57.221 --> 01:02.741 line and then arranges them in a pattern. 01:02.740 --> 01:07.620 Ordinarily, in accentual syllabic verse, 01:07.624 --> 01:14.764 which is what we're reading more often than not in English 01:14.762 --> 01:19.142 poetry, the accents are arranged in 01:19.143 --> 01:24.823 relation to unaccented syllables, creating a kind of 01:24.816 --> 01:28.706 limited array of standard units. 01:28.709 --> 01:33.909 The most standard of these is the iamb. 01:33.910 --> 01:39.550 The iamb is a simple pattern of an unstressed syllable followed 01:39.550 --> 01:41.370 by a stressed one. 01:41.370 --> 01:44.130 A boat, about, 01:44.130 --> 01:47.090 a dress, a coat: 01:47.094 --> 01:52.724 these are all simple iambic phrases that you hear in our 01:52.717 --> 01:55.577 language all the time. 01:55.580 --> 02:00.330 If you repeat a boat three times--a boat, 02:00.326 --> 02:03.576 a boat, a boat--you have 02:03.578 --> 02:08.498 trimeter, iambic trimester – three iambs in a row. 02:08.500 --> 02:13.570 If you do it four times, you've got tetrameter, 02:13.565 --> 02:17.195 a more common meter in English. 02:17.199 --> 02:22.379 And if you repeat them five times, you have pentameter. 02:22.380 --> 02:26.580 Accent: what is an accent? 02:26.580 --> 02:30.920 For some of you, this will seem self-evident; 02:30.919 --> 02:34.789 for others, it'll seem like a great puzzle. 02:34.789 --> 02:41.619 What constitutes an accent when you--what is an accent in a 02:41.617 --> 02:44.087 given English word? 02:44.090 --> 02:49.440 In fact, linguists often argue about this subject, 02:49.442 --> 02:52.612 and it's a complicated one. 02:52.610 --> 02:56.790 Accent is something somewhat difficult to define and 02:56.793 --> 03:00.603 categorize. Don't worry about that. 03:00.599 --> 03:06.099 Poetry is not interested in expert debate at all, 03:06.100 --> 03:12.290 and it converts the big spectrum of possible degrees of 03:12.287 --> 03:18.247 accent into those two simple categories: stressed and 03:18.246 --> 03:21.336 unstressed syllables. 03:21.340 --> 03:27.450 So, if you're unsure about the metrical definition of a line, 03:27.454 --> 03:32.554 because it's hard to discriminate between levels of 03:32.549 --> 03:36.779 stress, as will almost certainly be the 03:36.779 --> 03:42.999 case, remember that more often than not, the context takes over 03:42.998 --> 03:49.018 and the regular beat of a meter rules and perhaps promotes an 03:49.017 --> 03:54.937 accent in a phrase that might not otherwise seem to have one 03:54.935 --> 03:59.055 to you. Let's illustrate these general 03:59.060 --> 04:04.770 points by just reading together and trying to hear the beginning 04:04.774 --> 04:08.044 of Robert Frost's poem "Birches," 04:08.039 --> 04:10.559 on page 211 in The Norton. 04:10.560 --> 04:14.280 04:14.280 --> 04:19.980 This is an example of blank verse, and that is always to 04:19.983 --> 04:24.443 be--blank verse always, perhaps confusingly, 04:24.442 --> 04:28.592 to be distinguished from free verse. 04:28.589 --> 04:31.959 Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter. 04:31.959 --> 04:36.439 Free verse is non-metrical poetry, another thing 04:36.440 --> 04:38.500 altogether. This is blank verse; 04:38.500 --> 04:40.810 it's the language of Shakespeare; 04:40.810 --> 04:42.730 it's the language of Milton. 04:42.730 --> 04:45.780 When I see birches bend to left and right 04:45.779 --> 04:48.989 Across the lines of straighter darker trees, 04:48.990 --> 04:52.560 I like to think some boy's been swinging them. 04:52.560 --> 04:57.790 Well, for me, when I try to make sense of the 04:57.785 --> 05:03.715 meter of given lines, I think it's useful to try to 05:03.723 --> 05:07.853 settle, to start, those syllables that 05:07.848 --> 05:11.608 seem most clearly stressed, to, you know, 05:11.606 --> 05:15.266 identify where there isn't question; 05:15.269 --> 05:18.699 and use that then as a structure from which to 05:18.704 --> 05:21.304 interpret the rest of the lines. 05:21.300 --> 05:23.860 So, why don't we do that together? 05:23.860 --> 05:28.910 Just looking at this first line: "When I see birches bend 05:28.907 --> 05:30.797 to left and right." 05:30.800 --> 05:36.110 "When I see birches bend to left and right." 05:36.110 --> 05:40.190 "When I see birches bend to left and right." 05:40.190 --> 05:42.210 And sometimes it's not good to repeat it too often; 05:42.209 --> 05:44.679 then you start to become unhinged. 05:44.680 --> 05:50.080 Let's see if we can't identify those syllables that we all are 05:50.079 --> 05:51.849 going to agree on. 05:51.850 --> 05:55.580 Where's the first accent that you really want to say, 05:55.582 --> 05:57.092 "that's an accent"? 05:57.090 --> 06:02.350 "I." "Birches." 06:02.350 --> 06:09.870 "Bend." "Left." 06:09.870 --> 06:13.160 "Right." Debate there? 06:13.160 --> 06:16.630 06:16.629 --> 06:23.679 Anybody want to propose another stress in that line? 06:23.680 --> 06:27.200 06:27.200 --> 06:34.950 Yes? There's a stress on "when" and 06:34.953 --> 06:37.983 "see." But what if I had the phrase, 06:37.983 --> 06:41.763 "I see"? What would be stressed in that 06:41.755 --> 06:45.705 phrase, "I see"? "See." 06:45.710 --> 06:50.310 That's true. "When I see birches bend to 06:50.308 --> 06:53.808 left and right." I think I would want to scan 06:53.810 --> 06:57.410 that line as a bit of an odd beginning. 06:57.410 --> 07:03.160 I think that word "see" deserves the accent there, 07:03.156 --> 07:10.306 and so it's--the first unit of sound isn't quite normative. 07:10.310 --> 07:15.460 It takes Frost a little sweep to get going. 07:15.459 --> 07:17.449 "When I see birches bend to left and right." 07:17.449 --> 07:20.179 But by the time we finish the end of that line, 07:20.178 --> 07:23.438 we are really right in the middle of very regular iambic 07:23.440 --> 07:26.180 pentameter. When I see birches bend 07:26.181 --> 07:30.031 to left and right Across the lines of straighter 07:30.029 --> 07:33.179 darker trees, I like to think some boy's been 07:33.179 --> 07:36.539 swinging them. "Across the lines of straighter 07:36.535 --> 07:38.605 darker trees." Let's do "the lines of 07:38.612 --> 07:39.882 straighter darker trees." 07:39.880 --> 07:41.590 Let's do that line. 07:41.590 --> 07:46.220 Accents here? "Cross." 07:46.220 --> 07:50.100 "Lines." "Straight." 07:50.100 --> 07:53.310 "Trees." Yes, that one's pretty simple. 07:53.310 --> 07:59.370 Thank you Frost, you have delivered this to us. 07:59.370 --> 08:02.720 And as is not often the case – excuse me, 08:02.715 --> 08:07.495 as is not seldom the case in Frost – there is almost a kind 08:07.495 --> 08:11.955 of metaphorical play between what he's describing and the 08:11.957 --> 08:16.017 sounds with which he is doing the describing. 08:16.019 --> 08:22.049 Here, this image of the lines of trees and the metrical 08:22.050 --> 08:27.300 regularity of that verse that describes them. 08:27.300 --> 08:31.260 "I like to think some boy's been swinging them." 08:31.259 --> 08:36.159 "I like to think some boy's been swinging them." 08:36.160 --> 08:37.740 Yes, what about this line? 08:37.740 --> 08:42.820 08:42.820 --> 08:51.230 "I like to think some boy's been swinging them." 08:51.230 --> 08:58.120 Student: [inaudible] Professor Langdon 08:58.120 --> 09:06.480 Hammer: The point is that "swing" has some interesting 09:06.477 --> 09:10.897 swinging effect. Yes, I'm not sure how to 09:10.895 --> 09:12.315 describe that exactly. 09:12.320 --> 09:17.710 Yes, we want to put a stress on "swing." 09:17.710 --> 09:20.610 What other words in that line? 09:20.610 --> 09:23.080 I'm sorry, "think"? Good. 09:23.080 --> 09:27.140 "Like," yes. "I like" is like "I see." 09:27.139 --> 09:35.849 "I like to think some boy's," "swing," "them." 09:35.850 --> 09:39.410 Yes, this, too, is an utterly regular iambic 09:39.413 --> 09:43.313 pentameter line: unstressed syllable followed by 09:43.308 --> 09:46.538 a stressed syllable, five in a row. 09:46.539 --> 09:50.169 And, yet, think about the qualities of sound that are so 09:50.170 --> 09:53.800 different between "across the lines of straighter darker 09:53.801 --> 09:57.961 trees" and "I like to think some boy's been swinging them." 09:57.960 --> 10:03.000 What Frost is interested in is what, really, 10:03.002 --> 10:09.452 ultimate variety of sounds he is able to produce as that 10:09.453 --> 10:16.493 metrical pattern comes into some kind of tension with English 10:16.489 --> 10:20.779 sentence sounds, as he calls them, 10:20.781 --> 10:25.911 with the effect that each of Frost's lines of iambic 10:25.914 --> 10:29.744 pentameter has different qualities, 10:29.740 --> 10:32.050 even when they're utterly regular. 10:32.049 --> 10:35.459 And there are, in Frost, often some 10:35.464 --> 10:39.004 variations. This is something I'd like you 10:39.000 --> 10:43.240 to practice, I'd like you to think about, be conscious of, 10:43.239 --> 10:46.139 and it's something we can return to. 10:46.139 --> 10:57.249 It's not something I expect you to necessarily master or become 10:57.252 --> 11:04.402 advanced in your expertise, but it is a dimension of the 11:04.402 --> 11:08.172 poetry that's absolutely essential to what it is and to 11:08.168 --> 11:11.928 what you're doing when you read and you hear that voice 11:11.933 --> 11:15.973 speaking. And so, I'd like you to work on 11:15.967 --> 11:18.627 attuning yourselves to it. 11:18.629 --> 11:22.799 What can you do with sound as interpreters? 11:22.799 --> 11:27.979 How do we start to make a connection between what we hear 11:27.981 --> 11:30.111 and what things mean? 11:30.110 --> 11:33.520 Well, in Frost's case, as I'm suggesting, 11:33.524 --> 11:38.394 there's often very skillful and complex imitation going on 11:38.389 --> 11:43.509 between Frost's sounds and what he's imaging or describing or 11:43.510 --> 11:47.010 the actions and events in the poem. 11:47.009 --> 11:53.119 That's the case marvelously in this poem, and I'd be happy to 11:53.122 --> 11:59.132 talk about particular examples with any of you who'd like to 11:59.132 --> 12:03.742 work through it. But the point I want to make 12:03.740 --> 12:08.970 about it is much more general and we don't have to look at 12:08.973 --> 12:11.823 particular cases to make it. 12:11.820 --> 12:16.860 This is a poem about bending and breaking, 12:16.859 --> 12:20.789 or not breaking, forms – forms, 12:20.792 --> 12:25.342 the material givens of the world. 12:25.340 --> 12:31.170 It's a poem, in fact, about strained 12:31.170 --> 12:40.000 relation in a kind of play that Frost is exploring, 12:40.000 --> 12:45.120 and that strained relation that the boy achieves as he learns 12:45.116 --> 12:47.756 how to play with these trees. 12:47.759 --> 12:53.709 Well, that's a version of what we hear in the poem when we hear 12:53.705 --> 12:59.455 the forms of strained relation between Frost's dynamic speech 12:59.459 --> 13:04.349 sounds and the metrical pattern of his writing. 13:04.350 --> 13:08.230 The kinetic activity of the form of the poem, 13:08.234 --> 13:12.034 in other words, is something that's like, 13:12.029 --> 13:17.339 but it's also itself for Frost, an instance of the relations of 13:17.342 --> 13:22.012 force and counter-force, desire and gravity, 13:22.008 --> 13:25.728 that the poem is describing. 13:25.730 --> 13:28.130 The meter has, in other words, 13:28.132 --> 13:32.112 in relation to his individual sentence sounds, 13:32.110 --> 13:37.850 some of the flexibility and also resistance that those trees 13:37.853 --> 13:42.723 have in relation to the boy using them to swing; 13:42.720 --> 13:49.130 to swing, to go up and down; to come and go safely. 13:49.129 --> 13:53.539 These are primal forms of play, if you like, 13:53.538 --> 13:57.638 that suggest forms of poetic activity; 13:57.640 --> 14:00.500 also, spiritual activity. 14:00.500 --> 14:06.670 Frost's ways of using language in short are like--are versions 14:06.673 --> 14:10.523 of the boy's way of using the trees. 14:10.520 --> 14:14.050 Let's look at the poem together. 14:14.050 --> 14:18.960 I'll read it. I like to think some 14:18.955 --> 14:20.735 boy's been swinging them. 14:20.740 --> 14:25.590 But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay 14:25.590 --> 14:28.330 As ice-storms do. 14:28.330 --> 14:31.990 [Frost is going to counter-pose the boy's swinging to 14:31.990 --> 14:40.410 the natural forces imaged in the ice storm.] 14:40.410 --> 14:43.890 Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter 14:43.886 --> 14:46.286 morning After a rain. 14:46.290 --> 14:49.200 They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, 14:49.196 --> 14:53.536 and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes 14:53.542 --> 14:57.262 their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes 14:57.263 --> 15:01.523 them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on 15:01.519 --> 15:05.339 the snow crust-- Such heaps of broken glass to 15:05.339 --> 15:08.569 sweep away You'd think the inner dome of 15:08.571 --> 15:10.021 heaven had fallen. 15:10.019 --> 15:15.129 They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, 15:15.130 --> 15:19.040 And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed 15:19.039 --> 15:24.009 So low for long, they never right themselves: 15:24.009 --> 15:27.139 You may see their trunks arching in the woods 15:27.139 --> 15:30.149 Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the 15:30.145 --> 15:32.945 ground Like girls on hands and knees 15:32.948 --> 15:37.548 that throw their hair Before them over their heads to 15:37.545 --> 15:42.035 dry in the sun. But I was going to say when 15:42.044 --> 15:45.754 Truth broke in With all her matter of fact 15:45.750 --> 15:50.320 about the ice storm, I should prefer to have some 15:50.316 --> 15:54.936 boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch 15:54.941 --> 15:58.801 the cows-- Some boy too far from town to 15:58.803 --> 16:02.263 learn baseball, Whose only play was what he 16:02.260 --> 16:05.520 found himself, Summer or winter, 16:05.516 --> 16:08.316 and could play alone. 16:08.320 --> 16:12.240 One by one he subdued his father's trees 16:12.240 --> 16:15.370 By riding them down over and over again 16:15.370 --> 16:18.840 Until he took the stiffness out of them, 16:18.840 --> 16:21.840 And not one but hung limp, not one was left 16:21.840 --> 16:24.090 For him to conquer. 16:24.090 --> 16:28.410 He learned all there was To learn about not launching 16:28.412 --> 16:31.732 out too soon And so not carrying the tree 16:31.726 --> 16:34.076 away Clear to the ground. 16:34.080 --> 16:38.570 He always kept his poise To the top branches, 16:38.570 --> 16:43.450 climbing carefully With the same pains you use to 16:43.445 --> 16:46.155 fill a cup Up to the brim, 16:46.162 --> 16:49.002 and even above the brim. 16:49.000 --> 16:53.510 Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, 16:53.509 --> 16:57.139 Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. 16:57.139 --> 17:02.569 So was I once myself a swinger of birches. 17:02.570 --> 17:06.210 And so I dream of going back to be. 17:06.210 --> 17:09.390 It's when I'm weary of considerations 17:09.390 --> 17:12.590 And life is too much like a pathless wood 17:12.589 --> 17:15.229 Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs 17:15.230 --> 17:18.100 Broken across it, and one eye is weeping 17:18.099 --> 17:21.279 From a twig's having lashed across it open. 17:21.279 --> 17:25.789 I'd like to get away from earth awhile, 17:25.789 --> 17:31.489 And then come back to it and begin over. 17:31.490 --> 17:33.690 May no fate willfully misunderstand me 17:33.690 --> 17:36.460 And half grant what I wish and snatch me away 17:36.460 --> 17:41.240 Not to return. Earth's the right place for 17:41.238 --> 17:43.718 love: I don't know where it's likely 17:43.722 --> 17:47.372 to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a 17:47.371 --> 17:50.491 birch tree, And climb black branches up a 17:50.491 --> 17:53.421 snow-white trunk Toward heaven, 17:53.420 --> 17:56.320 till the tree could bear no more, 17:56.319 --> 17:59.739 But dipped its top and set me down again. 17:59.740 --> 18:04.200 That would be good both going and coming back. 18:04.200 --> 18:08.460 One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. 18:08.460 --> 18:15.270 So, think about the birches as a tool, another tool, 18:15.272 --> 18:23.022 but this time a tool for play, a tool for playing alone. 18:23.019 --> 18:28.369 As in "Mowing," Frost is writing about solitude, 18:28.370 --> 18:31.330 an essential loneliness. 18:31.329 --> 18:34.519 The boy's solitude is like the mower's. 18:34.520 --> 18:40.700 Who's absent? Well, other children. 18:40.700 --> 18:46.460 The other character that's mentioned in the poem is the 18:46.462 --> 18:50.092 boy's father, whose trees they are, 18:50.091 --> 18:54.681 the property owner, who also is absent. 18:54.680 --> 18:57.940 It's his absence that leaves the boy alone to his own 18:57.942 --> 19:00.962 devices. We might think of him not 19:00.955 --> 19:06.865 simply as the farmer who holds the deed to those birches but as 19:06.870 --> 19:11.710 maybe God the Father, who created them, 19:11.706 --> 19:17.246 and is likewise absent or invisible. 19:17.250 --> 19:23.220 In the solitude, the solitude of that absence, 19:23.217 --> 19:29.977 the boy uses the tree to work his will playfully. 19:29.980 --> 19:35.140 This time, he's not really a worker--to work his will on the 19:35.140 --> 19:38.850 world. And the boy uses the trees to 19:38.852 --> 19:41.972 do two things, right: to go up, 19:41.968 --> 19:46.018 or go out, and come back, to return. 19:46.019 --> 19:50.669 This activity in a wonderful homely way is a version of 19:50.671 --> 19:55.941 romance quest. It's an image of ascent toward 19:55.940 --> 20:00.610 heaven, from which the boy returns. 20:00.609 --> 20:05.189 He's able to rise, to transcend the limits of his 20:05.193 --> 20:07.393 own body and station. 20:07.390 --> 20:13.350 At the same time it's dangerous. 20:13.349 --> 20:18.049 It's dangerous to want to get away from earth awhile, 20:18.046 --> 20:21.926 to get your feet entirely off the ground. 20:21.930 --> 20:24.720 What might happen to you? 20:24.720 --> 20:32.520 Well, to put too much pressure on any tool is to risk breaking 20:32.521 --> 20:41.301 it – breaking down maybe, crashing, coming back to earth 20:41.300 --> 20:46.540 like Icarus, the over-reacher. 20:46.539 --> 20:51.339 The poet, after all, is subject to gravity in Frost, 20:51.343 --> 20:53.983 to the force of the earth. 20:53.980 --> 20:58.570 That checks. It's a counter-weight to 20:58.566 --> 21:01.256 Frost's romantic longing. 21:01.259 --> 21:05.579 The skill and the play that Frost is talking about depend on 21:05.581 --> 21:09.611 being able to use the tool – in this case the tree, 21:09.609 --> 21:14.169 emblematic of the world in its sturdy but also delicate 21:14.170 --> 21:19.320 materiality – to use the tool to return safely to the ground 21:19.321 --> 21:22.701 to get your feet back on the ground. 21:22.700 --> 21:26.280 For "earth's the right place for love," Frost says. 21:26.279 --> 21:31.829 It's love that makes the boy climb, as it made the mower 21:31.825 --> 21:35.765 work, remember? But who was talking about love? 21:35.770 --> 21:40.670 It's the--Frost is so sly. 21:40.670 --> 21:44.420 He brings it up as if we know that this is what he's been 21:44.418 --> 21:46.358 talking about all the time. 21:46.359 --> 21:49.949 Notice, in fact, the cleverness of all this 21:49.949 --> 21:51.999 discourse in the poem! 21:52.000 --> 21:56.890 Notice the freedom that he exercises in unfolding what 21:56.891 --> 22:02.241 feels like an improvisatory monologue in which he makes you 22:02.244 --> 22:07.974 race to keep up with him as he follows a semi-hidden logic that 22:07.966 --> 22:10.916 he treats as self-evident. 22:10.920 --> 22:14.950 Notice that final colloquial phrase, "to go." 22:14.950 --> 22:16.980 He repeats it twice. 22:16.980 --> 22:21.900 "I don't know where it's" – love – "likely to go better," 22:21.902 --> 22:25.842 and then, "I'd like to go by climbing a tree." 22:25.839 --> 22:28.769 A wonderful phrase, "to go," meaning what? 22:28.769 --> 22:34.589 A variety of things: "to go" in the sense of to make 22:34.591 --> 22:38.701 something work out, to make it go, 22:38.700 --> 22:46.800 to journey, to choose how to live, to go to the limit, 22:46.802 --> 22:52.002 where the tool can bear no more. 22:52.000 --> 22:54.100 Yes. And people use that phrase, 22:54.100 --> 22:56.540 too, to mean "to die," don't they? 22:56.539 --> 23:01.209 You know, "I'd like to go in this way"; 23:01.210 --> 23:05.680 all those resonances in those two words. 23:05.680 --> 23:10.920 On Monday I stressed that poetry was, for Frost, 23:10.921 --> 23:16.391 always a mode of work, and that work was for him a 23:16.385 --> 23:19.615 model of poetic activity. 23:19.619 --> 23:24.129 With "Mowing" as the example, I said that in Frost, 23:24.127 --> 23:29.267 meaning is always something made, something the poet works 23:29.266 --> 23:31.156 on and works for. 23:31.160 --> 23:37.070 Frost's modernity consists in that: the idea that truth is 23:37.070 --> 23:41.530 something that's concrete and contingent, 23:41.529 --> 23:46.559 not a metaphysical matter, not an ideal principle, 23:46.557 --> 23:52.507 and that it's something that's only available in the act of 23:52.508 --> 23:56.088 deriving it, constructing it; 23:56.089 --> 24:00.969 an act that is ordinary, that's not capable of being 24:00.969 --> 24:05.469 completed and therefore necessarily always to be 24:05.466 --> 24:08.106 repeated; an ongoing task, 24:08.111 --> 24:12.231 something you have to get up and do every day. 24:12.230 --> 24:17.820 Frost is a kind of materialist, by which I mean he calls 24:17.818 --> 24:22.388 attention to the circumstances of imagination, 24:22.391 --> 24:25.441 its limits and conditions. 24:25.440 --> 24:30.340 Poetry is, in Frost, an encounter between fact and 24:30.339 --> 24:33.839 desire: what we want and what is. 24:33.840 --> 24:37.430 24:37.430 --> 24:42.860 Tools, in Frost, are an image of the enabling 24:42.860 --> 24:47.920 and defining conditions of imagination, 24:47.920 --> 24:54.340 and they include in the work of poetry itself all sorts of 24:54.342 --> 25:00.992 tools, all the technology of language and the technology, 25:00.990 --> 25:04.740 in particular, of verse, including, 25:04.736 --> 25:07.046 importantly, meter. 25:07.049 --> 25:11.459 The relation between the speech sounds and the metrical frame of 25:11.460 --> 25:15.100 a poem, such as "Birches"--it's like the relation, 25:15.099 --> 25:18.069 as I'm saying, between the boy and the 25:18.067 --> 25:20.447 birches. In other words, 25:20.447 --> 25:24.967 meter is something Frost knows how to use. 25:24.970 --> 25:29.000 It's a material force that his rhetoric challenges and relies 25:28.995 --> 25:32.345 on, gives him a means of getting off the ground, 25:32.349 --> 25:36.619 and a means of always getting back to it, too. 25:36.619 --> 25:39.029 And that's another kind of doubleness in Frost. 25:39.029 --> 25:42.069 I talked about doubleness last time. 25:42.069 --> 25:48.109 Think, in "Birches," of really the extraordinary play of 25:48.114 --> 25:52.404 language, the freedom of association, 25:52.400 --> 25:56.040 the metaphorical invention – all of which is being played off 25:56.044 --> 25:58.224 of the strict demands of the meter, 25:58.220 --> 26:02.170 at every moment. It's part of the energy and 26:02.174 --> 26:04.054 force of the poem. 26:04.049 --> 26:10.539 The work of poetry in Frost, really the high drama of the 26:10.536 --> 26:15.966 will at work in the world, is something that we can 26:15.967 --> 26:20.707 actually hear in his poetry, in the expertly explored 26:20.707 --> 26:24.077 tensions between speech and meter. 26:24.079 --> 26:29.329 In that meter, too, we're hearing some of 26:29.333 --> 26:31.963 Frost's modernity. 26:31.960 --> 26:34.140 Let me say more about what I mean. 26:34.140 --> 26:37.300 26:37.299 --> 26:41.939 Let me say more about what I mean by approaching the question 26:41.935 --> 26:44.405 of his modernness, his modernity, 26:44.407 --> 26:47.727 from the point of view of his subjects. 26:47.730 --> 26:52.570 Last time I showed you his second book and its cover, 26:52.572 --> 26:54.902 North of Boston. 26:54.900 --> 26:58.310 The title of that book, published in 1914, 26:58.312 --> 27:02.642 and the one that more than any other made him famous, 27:02.641 --> 27:06.721 locates his subjects in a specific geography. 27:06.720 --> 27:11.070 It's important for thinking about Frost's place in modern 27:11.070 --> 27:12.680 poetry. Boston, well, 27:12.678 --> 27:16.028 it was the capital of nineteenth-century American 27:16.032 --> 27:19.902 literature and culture, a name synonymous, 27:19.901 --> 27:26.401 eventually, with gentility, Puritanism, old American money 27:26.398 --> 27:30.478 and style; exactly, in other words, 27:30.476 --> 27:34.366 everything modernism was attacking. 27:34.369 --> 27:37.109 So, where do you go to write modern poetry? 27:37.110 --> 27:40.130 Well, anywhere but Boston. 27:40.130 --> 27:47.790 Pound and Eliot importantly go to London, Paris. 27:47.789 --> 27:53.509 There's the New York of Crane, of Moore, of Stevens, 27:53.507 --> 27:56.147 too. But Frost says differently. 27:56.150 --> 28:00.670 He alone moves poetry north of Boston. 28:00.670 --> 28:05.580 To do this is to reverse the social direction in which 28:05.575 --> 28:09.885 everyone else is going, to reverse the direction of 28:09.894 --> 28:13.754 American modernization, which is evacuating rural New 28:13.753 --> 28:17.683 England, sending its workers to the 28:17.681 --> 28:22.231 cities in the new industrial economy. 28:22.230 --> 28:26.310 You can think about Crane's images of the Brooklyn Bridge in 28:26.308 --> 28:30.248 this course and then compare Frost's image of the woodpile 28:30.249 --> 28:34.669 – that abandoned woodpile that some worker has left in the poem 28:34.674 --> 28:36.614 called "The Woodpile." 28:36.609 --> 28:41.719 These are, in a sense, complementary images of the 28:41.723 --> 28:43.813 modern in America. 28:43.809 --> 28:48.619 Frost, when he goes north of Boston, goes back to the 28:48.623 --> 28:52.423 country, goes in, in a sense, the opposite 28:52.417 --> 28:55.747 direction that America is going. 28:55.750 --> 29:00.010 He goes in a sense in an anti-modern direction, 29:00.009 --> 29:05.009 maybe even in some sense in a reactionary direction, 29:05.009 --> 29:09.289 at least in relation to other poets' ideas of progress and 29:09.293 --> 29:13.033 innovation. This move roots Frost's poetry 29:13.029 --> 29:18.179 of work in the lives of rural workers, people who have to 29:18.179 --> 29:21.489 sustain and entertain themselves, 29:21.490 --> 29:27.170 often on their own or alone. 29:27.170 --> 29:30.640 What these people have to work with are the tools that have 29:30.640 --> 29:33.750 been passed down to them, or sometimes that they have 29:33.752 --> 29:38.192 invented. The poverty of the people Frost 29:38.185 --> 29:41.365 writes about is important. 29:41.369 --> 29:45.589 It makes them materialists, too, or realists, 29:45.592 --> 29:49.342 like Frost. They are acutely conscious of 29:49.343 --> 29:53.663 the circumstances in which they live their lives. 29:53.660 --> 29:57.870 And they suffer, they rage. 29:57.869 --> 30:01.069 Their New England, importantly, 30:01.066 --> 30:04.686 is not an ideal, pastoral place. 30:04.690 --> 30:08.050 The heart of North of Boston is a series of 30:08.050 --> 30:10.520 dramatic monologues and dialogues, 30:10.519 --> 30:14.429 speeches and conversations for people who really had never 30:14.434 --> 30:18.284 spoken or never spoken very much in modern--excuse me, 30:18.279 --> 30:22.199 in American poetry before and who, in Frost, 30:22.203 --> 30:26.313 speak in a wholly distinctive way: that is, 30:26.309 --> 30:30.879 in Frost's combination of colloquial sentence sound and 30:30.877 --> 30:33.327 unrhymed iambic pentameter. 30:33.329 --> 30:36.189 Blank verse: it is the heroic language of 30:36.190 --> 30:39.050 Shakespeare, of Milton, of Wordsworth. 30:39.049 --> 30:44.429 "The Death of the Hired Man," "Home Burial," "A Servant to 30:44.434 --> 30:49.914 Servants," "The Fear" – these are poems in which Frost is 30:49.913 --> 30:55.493 giving New England workers the language of the great English 30:55.486 --> 30:59.356 poets. I've been stressing Frost's 30:59.356 --> 31:03.156 solitude. Well, all the people Frost 31:03.163 --> 31:09.613 writes about are in some sense alone, often alone together. 31:09.609 --> 31:13.569 They share solitude, solitary, too, 31:13.565 --> 31:17.515 in their relation to each other. 31:17.519 --> 31:21.439 Frost as a narrator, in these great poems I'm 31:21.440 --> 31:25.630 describing, frames his people's words minimally, 31:25.628 --> 31:29.458 with few bits of narrative information. 31:29.460 --> 31:34.030 He just sort of plunges you into their speech, 31:34.026 --> 31:37.676 into their lives, and you have to, 31:37.680 --> 31:42.840 in a sense, work to get into their character to be able to 31:42.835 --> 31:45.725 keep track of who is speaking. 31:45.730 --> 31:51.110 Let's look at what is, for me, the most gripping 31:51.112 --> 31:57.872 example of this kind of poem: "Home Burial," on page 204. 31:57.870 --> 32:01.890 32:01.890 --> 32:06.170 Giving us little introduction, little framing, 32:06.167 --> 32:09.397 and no consoling closure really, 32:09.400 --> 32:12.930 where the moral might come in another poet, 32:12.931 --> 32:17.301 Frost creates a kind of uncomfortable intimacy for us 32:17.304 --> 32:21.934 with his characters where we're challenged by them, 32:21.930 --> 32:24.650 we're brought up close to them. 32:24.650 --> 32:26.970 Look at "Home Burial" here. 32:26.970 --> 32:30.430 He saw her from the bottom of the stairs 32:30.430 --> 32:33.650 Before she saw him. 32:33.650 --> 32:37.920 [And that's a kind of emblematic moment in Frost 32:37.920 --> 32:40.970 where one person is, in a sense, seeing another 32:40.970 --> 32:44.130 without being seen.] She was starting down, 32:44.130 --> 32:48.000 Looking back over her shoulder at some fear. 32:48.000 --> 32:51.190 She took a doubtful step and then undid it 32:51.190 --> 32:53.720 To raise herself and look again. 32:53.720 --> 32:55.550 He spoke Advancing toward her: 32:55.547 --> 32:58.427 "What is it you see From up there always?--for I 32:58.429 --> 32:59.269 want to know." 32:59.270 --> 33:02.620 33:02.620 --> 33:05.680 [This is another important Frostian motivation, 33:05.675 --> 33:10.355 "for I want to know"; here, a desire expressed 33:10.359 --> 33:13.089 between two people, a husband and a wife.] 33:13.089 --> 33:16.519 She turned and sank upon her skirts at that, 33:16.523 --> 33:20.523 [as if collapsing] And her face changed from 33:20.523 --> 33:22.353 terrified to dull. 33:22.349 --> 33:26.009 He said to gain time: [And isn't that an interesting 33:26.012 --> 33:30.512 phrase, "to gain time"?] "What is it you see?" 33:30.509 --> 33:36.609 Mounting until she cowered under him. 33:36.609 --> 33:41.999 [For he is fearful, or fearsome.] 33:42.000 --> 33:47.980 "I will find out now--you must tell me, dear." 33:47.980 --> 33:51.460 She, in her place, refused him any help, 33:51.460 --> 33:56.560 With the least stiffening of her neck in silence. 33:56.559 --> 34:00.269 She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see, 34:00.270 --> 34:05.400 Blind creature; and awhile he didn't see. 34:05.400 --> 34:11.400 But at last he murmured, "Oh," and again, 34:11.400 --> 34:15.310 "Oh." "What is it--what?" 34:15.310 --> 34:20.230 she said. "Just that I see." 34:20.230 --> 34:22.780 "You don't," she challenged. 34:22.780 --> 34:26.810 "Tell me what it is. Put it into words. 34:26.810 --> 34:27.930 What does he see? 34:27.929 --> 34:34.189 Well, "The wonder is I didn't see at once" and that is the 34:34.188 --> 34:38.688 grave that he has made for their child. 34:38.690 --> 34:42.110 34:42.110 --> 34:48.120 In those blocks of speech there's, importantly--there's 34:48.116 --> 34:52.896 white space around what they have to say. 34:52.900 --> 34:58.460 It's almost a way of inviting us to visualize the separation 34:58.458 --> 35:01.848 of these two people as they speak. 35:01.849 --> 35:06.349 And as we read, we have to fill in the nature 35:06.353 --> 35:08.813 of their relationship. 35:08.809 --> 35:17.489 Here, well, people are locked into themselves in Frost and in 35:17.491 --> 35:20.821 their points of view. 35:20.820 --> 35:27.350 Here, the issue in this poem is grief, how the mother and father 35:27.347 --> 35:33.457 each express how they deal with the death of their child. 35:33.460 --> 35:37.220 Simply where and how they stand in relation to each other as 35:37.215 --> 35:38.865 they speak is important. 35:38.870 --> 35:42.490 35:42.489 --> 35:46.789 The woman, the mother, wishes to--can't help herself 35:46.787 --> 35:50.407 from trying to hold on to the dead child, 35:50.409 --> 35:56.429 and she's caught looking behind her as if towards the past, 35:56.426 --> 35:59.016 which is also, frankly, 35:59.019 --> 36:04.629 a wish to escape her husband who is a frightening force, 36:04.630 --> 36:07.690 to escape his will, I think. 36:07.690 --> 36:12.700 His will, his force – these are his ways, 36:12.699 --> 36:17.469 his resources for responding to death. 36:17.469 --> 36:22.759 The woman's objection, as the poem unfolds, 36:22.764 --> 36:28.694 is summed up by his choice, the father's choice, 36:28.688 --> 36:32.468 to bury the child himself. 36:32.469 --> 36:38.809 He responds to this grievous loss privately by taking it on 36:38.810 --> 36:45.590 himself, by seeking to master it himself, and specifically as a 36:45.587 --> 36:50.617 worker. And the grim tool, 36:50.624 --> 36:59.364 if you like, of his mourning is his spade, 36:59.358 --> 37:07.878 the shovel he uses to do the burying. 37:07.880 --> 37:15.350 On page 206, she says, well, 37:15.354 --> 37:23.664 "There you go sneering now!" 37:23.660 --> 37:25.860 And he says: "I'm not, I'm not! 37:25.860 --> 37:27.820 You make me angry. 37:27.820 --> 37:28.240 I'll come down to you. 37:28.240 --> 37:30.500 God, what a woman! 37:30.500 --> 37:34.160 And it's come to this, A man can't speak of his own 37:34.160 --> 37:35.640 child that's dead." 37:35.639 --> 37:37.389 "You can't [speak] because you don't know how to 37:37.386 --> 37:38.126 speak. [She says.] 37:38.130 --> 37:39.950 "If you had any feelings, you that dug 37:39.949 --> 37:43.809 With your own hand--how could you?--his little grave; 37:43.809 --> 37:46.379 I saw you from that very window there, 37:46.380 --> 37:49.510 Making the gravel leap and leap in air, 37:49.510 --> 37:53.670 Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly 37:53.670 --> 37:57.940 And roll back down the mound beside the hole. 37:57.940 --> 38:00.590 I thought, Who is that man? 38:00.590 --> 38:05.630 I didn't know you. Well, the father in "Home 38:05.631 --> 38:10.081 Burial" is a worker, a worker there in those lines 38:10.084 --> 38:13.724 reduced to this tool that he's using, 38:13.719 --> 38:18.639 almost mechanically, that makes the dirt leap; 38:18.639 --> 38:24.799 a kind of desperate mechanism that's trying to take control of 38:24.802 --> 38:29.852 the world and failing as he, well, she says to him, 38:29.854 --> 38:34.064 and this chills her: "I can repeat the very 38:34.059 --> 38:38.289 words you were saying: 'Three foggy mornings and one 38:38.287 --> 38:42.137 rainy day Will rot the best birch fence a 38:42.139 --> 38:44.529 man can build.' Think of it, 38:44.527 --> 38:47.397 talk like that at such a time!" 38:47.400 --> 38:49.830 But in fact, in his own way, 38:49.829 --> 38:54.239 he's talking about his inability to keep his child 38:54.239 --> 38:58.839 alive there; in a kind of metaphorical way, 38:58.841 --> 39:04.111 speaking of his failure to build a fence to last. 39:04.110 --> 39:09.420 And it drives his wife ultimately, disgusted by him, 39:09.418 --> 39:11.498 away, fearing him. 39:11.500 --> 39:18.020 Well, "Home Burial" is a poem about the limits of work, 39:18.023 --> 39:24.433 the inability of the worker to bring a knowable world, 39:24.426 --> 39:27.926 a safe world, into being. 39:27.929 --> 39:33.089 There is in Frost no God, no transcendental source of 39:33.090 --> 39:38.050 guidance or consolation, nothing out there in the world 39:38.054 --> 39:42.034 but the material conditions of our circumstances. 39:42.030 --> 39:47.340 Over and over again in Frost poems, you see speakers, 39:47.343 --> 39:51.843 you see the poet himself, wanting to know; 39:51.840 --> 39:57.480 and wanting to know means pressing towards some 39:57.483 --> 40:04.603 revelation, towards some sense of the meaning of things, 40:04.599 --> 40:09.869 a search for some kind of presence behind the way things 40:09.874 --> 40:12.594 are. That is the subject of the 40:12.588 --> 40:14.478 great sonnet "Design." 40:14.480 --> 40:20.170 Also, in a very different mood, the poem "For Once, 40:20.168 --> 40:22.328 Then, Something." 40:22.329 --> 40:26.649 It's also the subject of "Neither Out Far nor In Deep," 40:26.650 --> 40:31.210 which I asked you to read for today and is on page 220. 40:31.210 --> 40:37.490 40:37.489 --> 40:43.239 I won't read it since we're running a little short of time. 40:43.239 --> 40:47.739 The people on the shore that Frost describes there looking 40:47.744 --> 40:51.304 out to sea--they're watching for something. 40:51.300 --> 40:53.810 But is there anything to watch for? 40:53.810 --> 40:56.980 Is there anything coming? 40:56.980 --> 41:00.300 No, it doesn't appear so. 41:00.300 --> 41:03.700 But as he asks at the end, "... 41:03.699 --> 41:08.779 when was that ever a bar / to any watch they keep?" 41:08.780 --> 41:15.150 In these poems, well, when Frost does give us 41:15.152 --> 41:21.382 images of God or some informing presence, 41:21.380 --> 41:27.980 that presence is imagined negatively, to be, 41:27.978 --> 41:34.268 well, as a kind of malevolence perhaps, 41:34.269 --> 41:39.299 to be inferred from the arbitrariness and cruelness of 41:39.304 --> 41:44.824 nature's destructive force of the conditions of life of the 41:44.815 --> 41:47.755 people Frost is describing. 41:47.760 --> 41:56.910 So, if in Frost you can't look to God for it, 41:56.910 --> 42:04.190 what kind of hope can be offered? 42:04.190 --> 42:06.700 How can you save your soul? 42:06.699 --> 42:10.579 This is a question Frost is interested in. 42:10.579 --> 42:15.769 In his own ways, he's interested in redemption 42:15.774 --> 42:19.934 – an important word for Stevens. 42:19.929 --> 42:25.229 To conclude, let me look quickly with you at 42:25.226 --> 42:28.056 two great late poems. 42:28.059 --> 42:32.309 One on page 222 is called "Provide, Provide." 42:32.310 --> 42:36.650 42:36.650 --> 42:42.650 I'll read this. The witch that came (the 42:42.648 --> 42:46.498 withered hag) To wash the steps with pail and 42:46.498 --> 42:49.758 rag Was once the beauty Abishag, 42:49.760 --> 42:51.590 The picture pride of Hollywood. 42:51.590 --> 42:54.800 Too many fall from great and good 42:54.800 --> 42:57.740 For you to doubt the likelihood. 42:57.740 --> 43:01.140 Die early and avoid the fate. 43:01.140 --> 43:06.500 Or if predestined to die late, Make up your mind to die in 43:06.503 --> 43:09.873 state. Make the whole stock exchange 43:09.873 --> 43:14.713 your own! If need be, occupy a throne, 43:14.710 --> 43:17.680 Where nobody can call you crone. 43:17.679 --> 43:20.179 Some have relied on what they knew, 43:20.180 --> 43:23.010 Others on being simply true. 43:23.010 --> 43:26.180 What worked for them might work for you. 43:26.180 --> 43:31.290 No memory of having starred Atones for later disregard 43:31.289 --> 43:33.609 Or keeps the end from being hard. 43:33.610 --> 43:37.750 Better to go down dignified With boughten friendship at 43:37.748 --> 43:39.798 your side Than none at all. 43:39.800 --> 43:46.350 Provide, provide! And in some recordings Frost 43:46.349 --> 43:50.719 then says, "... or somebody'll provide for ya." 43:50.719 --> 43:54.729 It's a very funny poem, and you've got triplet rhymes 43:54.728 --> 43:58.428 there to make sure you know that Frost is joking, 43:58.428 --> 44:01.048 and it feels like light verse. 44:01.050 --> 44:03.840 But, of course, what are we laughing at? 44:03.840 --> 44:08.580 Public achievement, moral stature – they're of no 44:08.581 --> 44:11.861 use. The end is hard and it's going 44:11.862 --> 44:15.662 to be hard, no matter how you come to it. 44:15.659 --> 44:19.109 So, you better look out for number one. 44:19.110 --> 44:23.340 This is good, old-fashioned American wisdom. 44:23.340 --> 44:27.820 What is scathing about it is that Frost gives up all 44:27.815 --> 44:30.795 justification for self-interest. 44:30.800 --> 44:34.330 There's no argument for it except self-interest itself. 44:34.329 --> 44:38.359 And then, Frost says, even that won't work. 44:38.360 --> 44:44.220 The choice is a terrifying one of no friendship and "boughten 44:44.220 --> 44:49.300 friendship," which really isn't friendship at all. 44:49.300 --> 44:52.900 In short, the only thing to do in life is to provide, 44:52.904 --> 44:56.654 and provide is just what you cannot ever adequately do, 44:56.648 --> 44:59.558 as the husband in "Home Burial" knows. 44:59.559 --> 45:03.919 This is a poem written in the depth of the Depression and also 45:03.915 --> 45:06.195 at the height of Frost's fame. 45:06.199 --> 45:11.819 You could see the kind of grim refusal to apologize for 45:11.818 --> 45:18.268 "boughten friendship," as a kind of, well, as a kind of apology 45:18.270 --> 45:21.600 for his own popular success. 45:21.599 --> 45:26.989 Let me conclude by just pointing to another poem, 45:26.994 --> 45:31.604 a late poem, "Directive," a poem published 45:31.601 --> 45:35.641 in 1947. It's on the page following. 45:35.639 --> 45:42.469 A poem published after the Second World War, 45:42.470 --> 45:48.030 written about the post-war world. 45:48.030 --> 45:52.640 It begins by, in a sense, rehearsing or 45:52.639 --> 46:00.039 taking us back to Frost's own initial move north of Boston. 46:00.039 --> 46:02.759 Back out of all this now too much for us, 46:02.760 --> 46:05.630 Back in a time made simple by the loss 46:05.630 --> 46:08.660 Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off 46:08.659 --> 46:11.789 Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, 46:11.789 --> 46:15.209 There is a house that is no more a house... 46:15.210 --> 46:18.970 And that is where he's going to take us in the poem. 46:18.969 --> 46:23.849 You can see that house as, in a sense, a version of the 46:23.850 --> 46:26.020 home in "Home Burial." 46:26.019 --> 46:31.269 Frost describes it here, movingly, as, 46:31.267 --> 46:39.207 well, an image of a home that is lost, of a home that has 46:39.209 --> 46:44.769 failed. And, yet, Frost's attention is 46:44.769 --> 46:51.569 drawn, interestingly, to a playhouse that is part of 46:51.570 --> 46:56.350 that household. He says in the middle of the 46:56.347 --> 46:59.157 poem on page 225: First there's the 46:59.162 --> 47:00.942 children's house of make-believe, 47:00.940 --> 47:03.720 Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, 47:03.719 --> 47:08.419 The playthings in the playhouse of the children. 47:08.420 --> 47:12.570 Weep for what little things could make them glad. 47:12.570 --> 47:17.050 Then for the house that is no more a house... 47:17.050 --> 47:21.870 And so on. At the end of the poem, 47:21.865 --> 47:27.995 here, Frost gives us, however, a kind of alternative 47:27.999 --> 47:35.459 to this image of the failure of the home and the failure of the 47:35.455 --> 47:41.375 worker's life, in our own imaginative access 47:41.384 --> 47:47.674 to a spring, a source, above the house that was the 47:47.668 --> 47:52.568 water of the house that nurtured it, 47:52.570 --> 47:56.150 that was its refreshment. 47:56.150 --> 47:59.360 He says: Your destination and your 47:59.364 --> 48:01.894 destiny's A brook that was the water of 48:01.888 --> 48:03.998 the house, Cold as a spring, 48:04.000 --> 48:09.000 as yet so near its source, Too lofty and original to rage. 48:09.000 --> 48:13.190 ... I have kept hidden in the 48:13.187 --> 48:17.837 instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside 48:17.840 --> 48:22.780 A broken drinking goblet like the Grail 48:22.780 --> 48:26.180 Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it, 48:26.179 --> 48:29.209 So can't get saved as Saint Mark says they mustn't. 48:29.210 --> 48:31.590 [And there he sounds like a child, doesn't he?] 48:31.590 --> 48:35.910 (I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.) 48:35.909 --> 48:39.569 Here are your waters and your watering place. 48:39.570 --> 48:45.030 Drink and be whole again beyond confusion. 48:45.030 --> 48:52.620 There, the goblet, the tool that Frost comes to is 48:52.616 --> 48:58.186 a--it's a tool from romance quest. 48:58.190 --> 49:04.710 It's the Grail; it's the cup of the Last Supper. 49:04.710 --> 49:06.660 But what is it? It's, in fact, 49:06.659 --> 49:09.879 a broken goblet from the children's playhouse. 49:09.880 --> 49:16.010 Frost returns us there to the early sources of imagination in 49:16.010 --> 49:19.380 children's play, and it gives us, 49:19.378 --> 49:24.538 at least imaginatively in this shared journey with him, 49:24.537 --> 49:28.547 access to a kind of primal refreshment, 49:28.550 --> 49:32.620 what he calls our "waters" and our "watering place." 49:32.619 --> 49:40.339 It's a disillusioned and self-consciously ironic promise 49:40.339 --> 49:44.409 of salvation, of wholeness. 49:44.409 --> 49:48.809 But it's still a promise, and it's a promise of the 49:48.805 --> 49:53.895 powers of imagination and of poetry, and of poetry made out 49:53.904 --> 49:56.634 of play, of a child's play. 49:56.630 --> 49:59.130 Well, that's a good place to stop. 49:59.130 --> 50:05.000 Next week we will go to work on William Butler Yeats.