How would you analyze the poem “Acquainted With the Night” by Robert Frost?
This poem is a variation on the Spenserian sonnet, with 4 three-line stanzas and a couplet to make up the 14 lines. The tricky rhyme scheme I think is more than a little responsible for its wording and meaning. After the first stanza, each 3-line stanza has the first and last lines rhyme with the middle line in the preceding stanza – until the last, which is a 2-line stanza with both lines rhyming with the middle line of the preceding stanza, With this rhyming restriction on it, I think this poem is lucky to have remained on the same subject throughout. I think it is simply a song of the loneliness of walking at night in a city, passing a watchman, hearing an unexplained cry, observing a clock on a tower with some peculiarity about it that suggested it might show the correct or incorrect time. But the significance of it all is to give the feeling of the loneliness of walking in a city in the night. The rhythms of the lines are elegant and I think a little reminiscent of TSE.
