"To Earthward" Analysis

“To Earthward”

Analysis

Love at the lips was touch

As sweet as I could bear;

And once that seemed too much;

I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things,

The flow of- was it musk

From hidden grapevine springs

Down hill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache

From sprays of honeysuckle

That when they're gathered shake

Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those

Seemed strong when I was young;

The petal of the rose

It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt

That is not dashed with pain

And weariness and fault;

I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark

Of almost too much love,

The sweet of bitter bark

And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred

I take away my hand

From leaning on it hard

In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough:

I long for weight and strength

To feel the earth as rough

To all my length.

To Earthward by Robert Frost is one of my all-time favorite poems, and especially my favorite poem by Robert Frost. This poem demonstrates the idea that attraction and love change over years. We begin with a young bitter love, and develop to a love that is an escape from life. 

The poem splits in the middle, where the first four stanzas are about the past. It is unclear if the past is the long past or the speakers lost youth. But the speaker presents the past clearly in the first four stanzas because he is speaking about what he thought “then.” The first stanza of the poem, “Love at the lips was touch/As sweet as I could bear,” explains that our young love is very simple. The act of kissing is simple, and the art of kissing is so sweet. Frost uses alliteration in the words “love” and “lips” to suggest the image of kissing, without using the actual word “kiss.” The last two lines of the quatrain, “And once that seemed too much; I lived on air,” allows Frost to emphasize that the kisses were perfectly sweet, but the narrator didn’t need sweets to feel the person’s love, because all he needed was air. This idea parallels to the idea that breathing the same air as a lover is equivalent to the sweetness of a kiss. 

In the second stanza, Frost is asking the reader a question. He is asking the reader this question, allowing him to recall the smells that were in the air. The contrasting smells of musk and honeysuckle create a sense of presence in the situation.  The imagery used of the flowers, dew, and sweets emphasizes the youthfulness in the narrator, and the specific desires in young lovers in the beginning of their inexperience in romance. 

The latter four stanzas are about the present, presenting how the speaker feel about love “now.” Frost’s words become a little more dark in the next three to four stanzas. The quotes, “petals of the rose...stung”, “dashed with pain”, “weariness”, “fault”, “no joy”, demonstrate that love was not as sweet as it was in the beginning. However, the phrases that Frost use are no elaboration on events that have happened. “Petals of the rose...stung”, suggest that such a sweet object or person, could be very wicked at the same time. These stanzas full of bitterness represent adult life, and adult love, and the difficulty that presents itself during this time. In the last two stanzas, Frost changes his tone again, and the last stanza suggest the image of a lying person. 

  Throughout the poem, the speaker is not interacting with another person, but rather with the physical world. Love is represented by tangible beauties on the earth such as honeysuckle, grapevines and rose petals, but also more complex ideas such as burnt cloves, bitter bark, and the roughness of the earth along its length. The last few lines of the poem are confusing, unclear, and open to interpretation, whether they refer to sexual desire, or the wishing of the grave to open.