Analysis of Two Look at Two
Robert Frost 1874 (San Francisco) – 1963 (Boston)
Love and forgetting might have carried them
A little further up the mountain side
With night so near, but not much further up.
They must have halted soon in any case
With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
When they were halted by a tumbled wall
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,
Spending what onward impulse they still had
In One last look the way they must not go,
On up the failing path, where, if a stone
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;
No footstep moved it. 'This is all,' they sighed,
Good-night to woods.' But not so; there was more.
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
She saw them in their field, they her in hers.
The difficulty of seeing what stood still,
Like some up-ended boulder split in two,
Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no fear there.
She seemed to think that two thus they were safe.
Then, as if they were something that, though strange,
She could not trouble her mind with too long,
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.
'This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?'
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait.
A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall as near the wall as they.
This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril,
Not the same doe come back into her place.
He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head,
As if to ask, 'Why don't you make some motion?
Or give some sign of life? Because you can't.
I doubt if you're as living as you look."
Thus till he had them almost feeling dared
To stretch a proffering hand -- and a spell-breaking.
Then he too passed unscared along the wall.
Two had seen two, whichever side you spoke from.
'This must be all.' It was all. Still they stood,
A great wave from it going over them,
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favour
Had made them certain earth returned their love.
Scheme | abcdefghijklbmaNopqrstugvwaNpdxyz1 2 3 g4 5 am6 |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1001011101 0101010101 1111111101 1111010101 1110111111 1101001010 1101010101 11101011101 1011010111 0111011111 1101011101 111111101 111111111 1111111111 01110111011 0101110111 1110111000 01000110111 1111010101 10010111111 1111111101 1111010111 1111001111 110110101 1111111111 1111011111 01110111011 0101110111 11110111010 1011110101 11111111 11111111110 1111110111 1111110111 111111101 110100100110 111110101 11110101111 1111111111 0111110101 110101111 1111010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,925 |
Words | 372 |
Sentences | 27 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 42 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,477 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 365 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 1:51 min read
- 387 Views
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