acquainted with the night essay

Acquainted with the Night Summary & Analysis by Robert Frost

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
Poetic Devices
Vocabulary & References
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
Line-by-Line Explanations

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Frost first published "Acquainted with the Night" in 1927. One of Frost's most celebrated poems, "Acquainted with the Night" is an exploration of isolation, sorrow, and despair—emotions that, to the poem's speaker, feel as inescapable as the night itself. These emotions, Frost suggests, are a universal part of the human experience. The 14-line poem is a terza rima sonnet , consisting of four tercets and a final rhyming couplet. The second line of each tercet provides the rhyme sound for the first and third lines of the following stanza (aba, bcb, cdc, and so on).

Read the full text of “Acquainted with the Night”

The Full Text of “Acquainted with the Night”

“acquainted with the night” summary, “acquainted with the night” themes.

Isolation, Sorrow, and Despair

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “acquainted with the night”.

I have been ... ... back in rain.

I have outwalked ... ... saddest city lane.

I have passed ... ... unwilling to explain.

I have stood ... ... an interrupted cry

Came over houses ... ... or say good-bye;

Lines 11-12

And further still ... ... against the sky

Lines 13-14

Proclaimed the time ... ... with the night.

“Acquainted with the Night” Symbols

Line 1: “I have been one acquainted with the night.”
Line 3: “I have outwalked the furthest city light.”
Line 14: “I have been one acquainted with the night.”

Line 11: “And further still at an unearthly height,”
Line 12: “One luminary clock against the sky”

Line 2: “I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.”

Lines 11-13: “And further still at an unearthly height, / One luminary clock against the sky / Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.”

“Acquainted with the Night” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

Personification.

Line 4: “I have looked down the saddest city lane.”
Lines 12-13: “One luminary clock against the sky / Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.”
Line 13: “Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.”
Line 2: “I have,” “in rain,” “in rain”
Line 3: “I have”
Line 4: “I have”
Line 5: “I have”
Line 7: “I have”
Line 2: “rain—and”
Line 6: “eyes, unwilling”
Lines 5-6: “beat / And”
Lines 7-8: “feet / When”
Lines 8-9: “cry / Came”
Lines 12-13: “sky / Proclaimed”

Alliteration

Line 4: “looked,” “saddest,” “city,” “lane”
Line 5: “watchman”
Line 6: “unwilling”
Line 7: “stood still,” “stopped,” “sound”
Line 8: “cry”
Line 9: “Came,” “street”
Line 10: “But,” “back,” “bye”
Line 12: “luminary,” “clock,” “sky”
Line 13: “wrong,” “right”
Line 1: “been one acquainted,” “with,” “night”
Line 2: “walked”
Line 3: “outwalked,” “furthest city light”
Line 4: “looked,” “down,” “saddest city lane”
Line 7: “stood still,” “stopped,” “sound,” “feet”
Line 8: “When far away”
Line 9: “street”
Line 10: “But,” “call,” “back,” “bye”
Line 12: “luminary clock,” “against,” “sky”
Line 13: “neither wrong nor right”
Line 2: “have,” “rain,” “back,” “rain”
Line 4: “have,” “saddest”
Line 5: “have passed”
Line 7: “stopped,” “of”
Line 11: “further,” “unearthly”
Line 12: “sky”
Line 13: “time,” “neither,” “right”
Line 14: “I,” “night”
Line 7: “feet”
Lines 11-13: “And further still at an unearthly height, / One luminary clock against the sky / Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. ”

“Acquainted with the Night” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

(Location in poem: Line 1: “acquainted”; Line 14: “acquainted”)

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Acquainted with the Night”

Rhyme scheme, “acquainted with the night” speaker, “acquainted with the night” setting, literary and historical context of “acquainted with the night”, more “acquainted with the night” resources, external resources.

"Acquainted with the Night" Read Aloud — Listen to author Robert Frost read his entire poem.

"Acquainted with the Night" Music Video — Listen to and watch an original music video adaptation of the poem.

"Acquainted with the Night" Musical Adaptation — Listen to a musical adaptation of the poem.

"Acquainted with the Night" Art Exhibit — Read about artist Howard Hodgkin's exhibit titled "Acquainted with the Night" and learn about Frost's influence on a contemporary artist.

Acquainted With the Night: How Whistler’s Nocturnes Changed America — Read about the connection between James Abbott McNeill Whistler's paintings and "Acquainted with the Night."

LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Frost

After Apple-Picking

Desert Places

Dust of Snow

Fire and Ice

Home Burial

Mending Wall

My November Guest

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

The Death of the Hired Man

The Oven Bird

The Road Not Taken

The Sound of the Trees

The Tuft of Flowers

The Wood-Pile

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Robert Frost’s Acquainted with the Night

Analysis of Robert Frost’s Acquainted with the Night

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on February 21, 2021 • ( 0 )

Acquainted with the Night (1928)

This terza rima sonnet from West Running Brook features a very different narrator from the country poet who is so familiar to us through such poems as “Birches” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Here the narrator is uncharacteristically urban. Some critics have drawn parallels to Dante’s Inferno, also written in tercets with interlocking rhymes, but the urban setting and images, speculated to be based on Ann Arbor, where Frost was living at the time of composition, seem more reminiscent of William Blake’s “London.” Frost writes, “I have outwalked the furthest city light / I have looked down the saddest city lane,” while Blake writes, “I wander thro’ each charter’d street, / Near where the charter’d Thames does flow. / And mark in every face I meet / Marks of weakness, marks of woe.”

The poem shares something in common with Frost’s other journey poems, such as “Into My Own.” He once again finds himself alone, only this time the setting is very different. The speaker, in a sort of soliloquy, reveals that more than once he has been “acquainted with the night.” The choice of acquainted is intriguing because it suggests a certain knowledge and familiarity without intimacy. An acquaintance is not a friend.

When the speaker says that he “has walked out in rain—and back in rain” he expresses an allencompassing awareness of the night, darkness, and what they hold. He has “outwalked the furthest city light” and “looked down the saddest city lane,” suggesting that night is associated with unexplainable sadness, but it is yet unclear whether this sadness is the speaker’s or is witnessed by the speaker. The question is whether the sadness is inherent in the lane or is the perception of the speaker. When he walks past the “watchman on his beat” and drops his eyes, “unwilling to explain,” he reflects Frost’s often coy persona. He does not say that he cannot explain but rather that he is unwilling to. The speaker’s unwillingness suggests that the sadness comes from within, not from outside, himself.

In the third stanza the speaker stands still, and the sound of feet stops. It is the sound of his own feet that is stopped, and when he hears from far away an “interrupted cry,” the poem grows more complicated. Is the cry from within or outside? The call is not meant to summon the speaker “back” or “say good-by,” writes Frost, but then, what is the cry for? Is it a cry of help? A cry of sadness, as alluded to in stanza two?

The poem’s trodding metrical feet become harder to understand between this fourth stanza and the ending couplet. The break indicated by the semicolon following “good-by” indicates a strange shift. The speaker begins to acquaint his readers with the night when he moves from the present to an “unearthly height” and a “luminary clock against the sky.” The clock is illuminated for the speaker, and its “unearthly height” suggests that it is Time, not time, with which the poem is concerned. That is, while he might be preoccupied with what seems to be earthly time, it is unearthly, transcendental time that vexes him.

When the proclamation comes from on high that “the time was neither wrong nor right,” Frost leaves his readers in the night he has created and begins again by returning to the poem’s title and first line: “I have been one acquainted with the night.”

The figure of night suggests the night that shrouds one in darkness, sadness, and contemplation in the darkest of hours. Night for Frost represents the innermost loneliness, a loneliness that keeps him isolated from those who cry out, but not for him, and from the watchman, who may or may not be aware of his presence. The speaker has scared himself with his “desert places.” Like Emily Dickinson in poems such as “I heard a Fly buzz— when I died—” and “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” he seems to have experienced a figurative death, as if he had been to the other side and returned to tell us about it. And now it seems that it is his own cries that are heard.

The repetition of “I have” and of “acquainted with the night” echo footfalls, suggesting that the reader accompanies the speaker into the night and must also determine whether the time is wrong or right. Jay Parini writes that Frost once said the clock “was in the tower of the old Washtenaw County Courthouse” in Ann Arbor, which would clearly indicate that there is a literal clock depicted in the poem (246). But the clock, like the night, is also symbolic. There may be an actual clock observed by the speaker, but what it represents goes beyond time as we know it.

Frost is often thought of as simply a poet of country matters, but he is much more than that. Here he places himself in a city setting. The poem flows smoothly but the speaker is ill at ease, and perhaps that is why it is a setting to which Frost does not often return. John Cunningham asserts that “One does well in Frost’s universe to be acquainted with the night, to know what it is like, but values and meaning are existential in the one who carries out his errands and keeps his promises. They are not transcendental” (270).

FURTHER READING Brady, Patrick. “From New Criticism to Chaos and Emergence Theory: A Reinterpretation of a Poem by Robert Frost,” Synthesis: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 41–57. Cunningham, John. “Human Presence in Frost’s Universe.” In The Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost, edited by Robert Faggen, 261–272. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Murray, Keat. “Robert Frost’s Portrait of a Modern Mind: The Archetypal Resonance of ‘Acquainted with the Night,’ ” Midwest Quarterly 41, no. 4 (June 2000): 370–384. Pack, Robert. Belief and Uncertainty in the Poetry of Robert Frost. Hanover, N.H.: Middlebury College Press, 2003. Parini, Jay. Robert Frost: A Life. New York: Holt, 1999. Timmerman, John H. Robert Frost: The Ethics of Ambiguity. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 2002.

A Summary and Analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘Acquainted with the Night’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Acquainted with the Night’ is a poem by Robert Frost (1874-1963), published in 1928. One of Frost’s most popular short poems, it is slightly unusual in his oeuvre in focusing on the urban rather than rural world of many of his other famous poems.

You can read ‘Acquainted with the Night’ here before proceeding to our analysis of the poem below.

‘Acquainted with the Night’: summary

To summarise: ‘Acquainted with the Night’ is a lyric poem in which the speaker (who may or may not be Frost himself) tells us that he has been one of those people ‘acquainted with the night’, who has walked outside, and home again, in the rain. He has walked far, out to the farthest edges of the city, where the city lights stop and he is plunged into a deeper darkness.

There is a suggestion of pathetic fallacy here: ‘night’ and ‘rain’ are both suggestive of gloomy or melancholic emotional states, and there’s a possibility that Frost’s speaker wants us to think beyond the literal and into the metaphorical: he is no stranger to dark thoughts and to sadness.

Indeed, such an analysis of the speaker’s meaning seems well-founded when he tells us, in the fourth line, he has ‘looked down the saddest city lane’ (where ‘I have looked down’ glimmers, momentarily, with the secondary meaning of looking down in the mouth , or looking depressed).

Seeing a night-watchman out on his patrol, or ‘beat’, the speaker has avoided his eye contact, perhaps because he suspects that if their eyes meet the watchman will ask him what brings him out so late. The speaker would rather not say.

In the third stanza, the speaker tells us he has stopped walking until the echoes of his footsteps cease, and he hears an ‘interrupted cry’ carry through the night air from another street.

But the cry is not meant for him (either someone calling him back or bidding him farewell). A tall clock (perhaps the town clock, in a clock tower, but probably the moon, given the word ‘luminary’, i.e. emitting light) high above him gives him the time, which is ‘neither wrong nor right’.

Perhaps this is because, it being night time, there is no right or wrong time for the speaker: time has largely lost its meaning, in terms of hours and minutes. The poem concludes with the speaker repeating that first line: he is (or has been) ‘one acquainted with the night’.

‘Acquainted with the Night’: analysis

‘Acquainted with the Night’ has been interpreted as a poem about loneliness, but this seems to be a reductive or even misguided analysis: the speaker appears to revel in his solitariness rather than feeling the lack of other human company, and notably, the one person he ‘meets’ in the poem, the watchman, he goes out of his way to avoid speaking to.

One of the problems in interpreting the meaning of the poem is that Frost’s speaker refuses to tell us how he feels about his solitary wandering through the night: he is, to borrow a phrase from the poem, ‘unwilling to explain’. Does he crave human company, does he wish that he had someone to call him back home? Ultimately, as with that interrupted cry in the poem, there is no answer.

Although it doesn’t necessarily strike us as one, ‘Acquainted with the Night’ is an example of the sonnet form : fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter . Or at least, ‘Acquainted with the Night’ appears to be a sonnet, since it has fourteen lines, is rhymed, and is written in (fairly regular) iambic pentameter.

However, the rhyme scheme does not match the rhyme scheme for any established sonnet. The poem is rhymed aba bcb cdc dad aa . And Frost’s decision to divide the poem into four tercets and a concluding couplet further disguises the poem’s links with the sonnet.

In fact, ‘Acquainted with the Night’ is not really a sonnet at all: the fact that it has fourteen lines and concludes, as the English or Shakespearean sonnet does, with a rhyming couplet is where the similarities end.

Instead, the poem is written in the Italian verse form known as terza rima , a three-line stanza form using what’s known as ‘chain rhyme’, where the middle line of each three-line stanza becomes the outer rhymes for the subsequent stanza (so ‘rain’, the middle line of Frost’s first stanza, gives us ‘lane’ and ‘explain’ in the first and third lines of the following stanza; ‘beat’ then gives us ‘feet’ and ‘street’; and so on).

However, Frost’s decision to conclude this pattern of chain rhyme by bringing the rhymes full-circle – i.e. back to ‘night’ rhyme that began the poem – so that the whole thing comes to fourteen lines is certainly interesting, and is perhaps meant to call to mind the sonnet form.

Terza rima was first used by the medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), who used the three-line stanza form for his religious epic, the Divine Comedy . Dante also wrote sonnets, so we might surmise (though we cannot know what Frost’s intentions were for sure) that Frost was setting out, with ‘Acquainted with the Night’, to write a ‘Dantean’ poem, whose form echoes those associated with Dante.

And thematically, too, there is something Dantean about ‘Acquainted with the Night’, with the dark city doubling up as a land of spiritual darkness, or ‘city of dreadful night’. This is not to say that the poem is religious – it is decidedly secular – but Frost’s choice of verse forms summons the possibility that he wishes to offer a secular, modern take on Dante’s vision of the Inferno.

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5 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘Acquainted with the Night’”

I always interpreted the “luminary clock” in “Acquainted with the Night” to be the moon. What other kind of clock says the time is “neither right nor wrong”?

I think you’re right. ‘Luminary’, too, suggests the borrowed light of the moon.

Private comment: did you edit after you received my comment (about the moon) or did I simply overlook the fact that you had already specifically mentioned the moon (and its “luminary” quality) in your original analysis of the poem? Anyway, now that I know someone actually reviews the comments (perhaps Mr. IL himself), thank you for your wonderful and very regular insights. Much enjoyed and much appreciated.

Yes – I updated the post after your insightful suggestion (I agree that the moon is more likely, though I’ve offered both possibilities, tentatively, in the analysis). So thanks for the comment, and for your kind words!

A personal remark: all three lines in the first stanza start with the personal pronoun “I”, in the second stanza only the first two lines start with “I”, in the third stanza only the first line contains “I”, the fourth stanza has no “I” at all, and only in the final verse the pronoun “I” reappears. I think it can be interpreted as a progressive diminution of the “I” as the poet walks through the city at night, leaving more and more room for the night to surround him: a kind of dissolution of the “self” in night, being gradually forgotten, to return in the end, maybe at dawn…

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“Acquainted With the Night” by Robert Frost, Essay Example

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Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night”, while fairly straightforward in poetical form, nonetheless carries a conceptual and narrative depth. This is arguably because of the almost universal sentiment Frost is attempting to communicate in his poem, a sentiment coupled with a certain archetypical imagery, above all dominated by the sadness evoked by night, which conveys his message. This message is one that is informed by a sadness, however also simultaneously evokes a contemplative reflection, whereby it seems that Frost wishes to express the sentiments of an individual who has experienced regrets and negative moments, but nevertheless approaches them with a certain existential calm.

Frost is explicit at the outset of the poem of a darkness that forms this existential drama:

I have been one acquainted with the night

I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

The imagery is direct and does not cause ambiguity. Frost plays with the universal imagery of night against day, of light against darkness. By suggesting that he is one acquainted with the night, the protagonist of Frost’s poem suggests that he is one who has experienced precisely this darkness. The simple and basic archetypal imagery is continued, as Frost mentions “rain”: a clear contrast to imageries of light, invoking a lack of existential trauma, marks the protagonist’s experiences with a form of crisis.

In the last line of the opening stanza, Frost repeats this theme with less classic, but also perhaps more revealing imagery. “To outwalk the furthest city light”, here compared and linked to the experiences of night and rain, suggests that the protagonist is one whose experience of darkness and depression is the result of a certain distancing from a community. The city lights, as symbolic of an urbanism, immediately brings to mind the notions of human relationships: to essentially go beyond these relationships, is to enter a solitude.

This clarifies the type of existential crisis the narrator is attempting to express: it is one that appears to have been brought upon by solitude. Furthermore, this solitude seems to have been an act of autonomy, an individual decision: the narrator has departed from these relationships on his own choice, having decided to leave behind the urban scene symbolic of these bonds. While this is an individual choice, it is not yet clear at this stage of the poem as to whether if this choice was perhaps a reaction to a particular relationship, one that forced him to depart in this metaphorical sense from other relationships.

This open question is perhaps clarified in the subsequent stanza, where the narrator is suddenly transported back to the heart of the city center. Frost notes that he has “looked down the saddest city lane”, while the first reference to another person appears in the following line, “I have passed by the watchman on his beat.” Frost here shows that he is using the city as a metaphor for some type of relationship: even in the heart of relationships, one can feel an emptiness. Frost therefore wishes to expand upon the thought of the initial stanza: solitude is not only established from a physical departure from a place, but here, of course, symbolically, one can experience such solitude amidst others. This is a deeply personal sadness that Frost is wishing to communicate.

The choice of the symbol of the night watchman is in this regard also revealing. The watchman is one who is supposed to keep an eye on those around him, who is to notice those around him. The narrator of the poem nevertheless “dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.” The symbol of an awareness of others, here manifested in the form of the watchman, is deliberately ignored by Frost’s narrator, thus once again re-enforcing the motif that it is a certain self-conscious decision that has shaped the narrator’s choice to, in some sense, break with relationships and community, for whatever reason, this is not yet clear.

This sadness seems to become more precise in the following stanzas, where Frost writes:

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street.

While deliberately ignoring the night watchman, Frost’s narrator has nevertheless not become entirely distanced from humankind: at the sound of some interrupted cry, his walk around the city, arguably symbolic of his retreat inside himself, is nonetheless for a moment halted. The narrator in other words only responds to a similar feeling of distress as to one the narrator feels. Normal forms of human interaction, as though displayed in the scene with the night watchmen, are of no consequence to him: the only relationship to another that can mean something to the narrator is one that is equally distressed as his own. With this contrast, Frost therefore establishes that the existential pain experienced by the narrator has in a sense made him benumbed to all other forms of social interaction and normativities: it is rather only through an encounter with a similar form of depression that can make his own depression, perhaps only for a moment, slip away.

Frost specifies what is at stake in the poem with the crucial next stanza:

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still and unearthly height,

A luminary clock against the sky.

That which has broken Frost’s narrator from his introvert and inwardly focused depression is a cry from another human being, and more specifically from someone who the narrator wishes would call him back or at least say some parting words. It becomes more clear at this stage that the reason for the depression is a failed relationship, and more specifically, a relationship that has been ended not by the narrator, but by the narrator’s partner in this relationship. What appears at the outset of the poem to have been the narrator’s autonomous choice to depart the realm of human relationships now becomes clearer: it is a choice that is nevertheless the result of being hurt by these same relationships. The fact that it is not the cry expected by Frost, but merely the sound of a lifeless machinery, expressed in the clock, re-enforces the narrator’s depression: the narrator truly now feels alone in the world.

Yet this stanza in itself is not complete, since it flows into the final two last lines of the poem, as the aforementioned clock

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

The transition here is ambiguous at first glance: the cry of the clock seems to have been expected or hoped by the narrator to have been the cry of a loved one to return. Now this misrecognition becomes something to the effect of a confirmation of the narrator’s decision for isolation and a retreat into his self: it is neither right nor wrong because the narrator himself now lives in a different almost dead space, according to which, perhaps in a crucial sense, the narrator now exists beyond normativities such as right and wrong. These are because such norms are part of the community of human relationships; the narrator, as exiled from these relationships, is no longer a part of these judgments. He rather is “acquainted with the night”, a space in which the despair of human relations overcomes their pertinence and their hold on an individual.

Frost’s narrator is a disappointed narrator, one who has become isolated from a human community. This appears to be the result of a failed relationship, which, in turn, induces the narrator reject human relations in their entirety. The reflection on this rejection dominates the narrator’s thoughts, his almost calm meditation on this new life the dominant motif of this poem.

Frost, Robert. “Acquainted with the Night.” Retrieved at: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/acquainted-with-the-night/ September 22, 2013.

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Analysis of Robert Frost’s Poem Acquainted with the Night

This essay about Robert Frost’s poem “Acquainted with the Night” explores its profound exploration of isolation, melancholy, and the human condition. Analyzing its structure, imagery, and themes reveals the speaker’s nocturnal through the lonely streets, illuminated by the desolate glow of the moon. The poem’s stark imagery paints a vivid picture of emotional solitude, while its thematic exploration encompasses existential angst and the passage of time. Ultimately, Frost’s work offers insight into the resilience of the human spirit amid darkness and despair.

How it works

Robert Frost’s poem “Acquainted with the Night” is a profound exploration of isolation, melancholy, and the human condition. Written in terza rima, the poem invites readers into the speaker’s nocturnal journey through the streets, illuminated only by the desolate glow of the moon. Through a close analysis of its structure, imagery, and themes, one can unravel the deeper layers of meaning embedded within this timeless piece of literature.

Structurally, Frost employs the terza rima form, a three-line stanza rhyming scheme with interlocking patterns.

This structure, commonly associated with Dante’s Divine Comedy, adds a sense of continuity and inevitability to the poem, mirroring the cyclical nature of the speaker’s nighttime wanderings. However, unlike Dante’s journey through the realms of the afterlife, the speaker in Frost’s poem traverses the lonely streets of the city, suggesting a metaphorical descent into the depths of his own psyche.

The imagery in “Acquainted with the Night” is stark and evocative, painting a vivid picture of the speaker’s emotional landscape. The night itself becomes a symbol of solitude and despair, casting shadows that envelop the speaker as he walks alone. Frost masterfully captures the desolation of the urban environment, describing the “luminary clock against the sky” and the “luminary-time” that separates him from the rest of the world. These images serve to emphasize the speaker’s sense of alienation and disconnection from society, highlighting the universal experience of feeling adrift in a sea of anonymity.

Thematically, the poem delves into the complexities of human emotion, particularly the profound sense of loneliness that can accompany periods of introspection. The speaker’s repeated assertion that he is “acquainted with the night” suggests a familiarity born out of repeated encounters with darkness and solitude. This familiarity, however, does not bring comfort but rather serves as a reminder of the speaker’s isolation. Frost captures the essence of existential angst, the feeling of being a solitary figure in an indifferent universe, through the speaker’s nocturnal wanderings.

Moreover, the poem can be interpreted as a meditation on the passage of time and the inevitability of mortality. The “luminary clock against the sky” serves as a constant reminder of the relentless march of time, ticking away the hours until dawn breaks. The speaker’s solitary vigil through the night underscores the fleeting nature of human existence, as he grapples with his own mortality in the face of the vast expanse of time.

Despite the pervasive sense of melancholy that pervades the poem, there is also a glimmer of resilience and acceptance in the speaker’s voice. Despite his profound sense of isolation, he continues to press forward, navigating the darkness with a sense of stoic resolve. This resilience speaks to the indomitable spirit of the human condition, the ability to find meaning and purpose even in the midst of despair.

In conclusion, Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night” is a timeless meditation on the complexities of the human experience. Through its evocative imagery, poignant themes, and masterful use of structure, the poem invites readers to contemplate the universal themes of loneliness, mortality, and resilience. As the speaker navigates the nocturnal landscape of the city, he confronts the darkness within himself, ultimately emerging with a deeper understanding of his own humanity. In this way, Frost’s poem serves as a beacon of light in the darkness, offering solace and insight to all who dare to brave the night.

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Review of Robert Frost’s Poem, Acquainted with The Night

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Acquainted with the Night

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I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.

This poem is in the public domain.

More by this poet

A line-storm song.

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, The road is forlorn all day, Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, And the hoof-prints vanish away. The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee, Expend their bloom in vain. Come over the hills and far with me, And be my love in the rain.

Not to Keep

They sent him back to her. The letter came Saying... and she could have him. And before She could be sure there was no hidden ill Under the formal writing, he was in her sight— Living.— They gave him back to her alive— How else? They are not known to send the dead— And not disfigured visibly. His face?—

A Time to Talk

When a friend calls to me from the road And slows his horse to a meaning walk, I don’t stand still and look around On all the hills I haven’t hoed, And shout from where I am, What is it? No, not as there is a time to talk. I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, Blade-end up and five feet tall,

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Essay Samples on Acquainted With The Night

The opposite themes in acquainted with the night and i wandered lonely as a cloud.

An everchanging world we live in. Earth is the fifth largest planet in our solar system. It is gigantic. It is easy to get lost, to lose yourself. Since modern times, depression has been a battle every person deals with. Depression is defined by Meriam-Webster’s...

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Alliteration and Other Literary Device in Acquainted with the Night and Other Work by Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost was an excellent, awarded American poet. This four time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry was born in San Francisco in 1874. He wrote his first poem for a high school magazine, and although his career did not start at that...

Literary Devices

Nature in Connection to Humanity in Robert Frost's’ Work

Nature is ever changing. Alongside the changes in seasons, changes in human life are occurring too. Just as nature is beautiful and pure, human life is the same. Robert Frost capitalizes these two aspects of life and uses it to give life to his poems....

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1. The Opposite Themes in Acquainted with the Night and I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

2. Alliteration and Other Literary Device in Acquainted with the Night and Other Work by Robert Frost

3. Nature in Connection to Humanity in Robert Frost’s’ Work

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Acquainted With the Night Essay Questions

By christopher dewdney, essay questions.

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What is Olbers' Paradox, and how was it solved?

Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers was a German astronomer who lived in the early/mid-nineteenth century. In 1826, he formally posed the following question: why is the night sky dark? For a little background to this question, astronomers had surmised that there were nearly countless stars, and physicists had determined that atmospheric dust would not obscure more than half of the light coming through the atmosphere. So the question arose: why wasn't the night sky blazing with the light of millions of stars?

Interestingly, American writer Edgar Allan Poe was the first to propose the correct solution, although he had no evidence and his theories were ridiculed at the time he published them. He theorized that the answer lies in the age of the universe: light can only travel so fast, so the darkness of the night means that the stars are so far away that their light hasn't arrived yet. These theories were ridiculed for nearly a hundred years before Edwin Hubble, an American astronomer, discovered that this was in fact the case by determining that the universe had a fixed point of beginning, and that everything in the universe was moving away from each other as a result. This realization solved Olbers' Paradox and revealed a fundamental fact about the nature of the universe at the same time.

Explain the unusual structure of this essay collection.

Dewdney structures this collection of short essays in an aesthetically pleasing, meaning, and compact form. He divides the prose into fourteen chapters, each chapter containing several smaller essays. Chapters One and Fourteen consist of the introduction and the conclusion, respectively, while Chapters Two through Thirteen each deal with a specific aspect of night in relation to a certain hour of night between 6 PM and 5 AM. For example, Chapter 2 is entitled “THE GARDENS OF THE HESPERIDES: SUNSET —6 P.M.” This chapter includes several smaller essays within it, including "Sunset Spectacular," "The Sundowners," "The Physics of Sunset," and others. There are twelve of these chapters, one for each hour between 6 and 5. This structure is perhaps an overcompensated attempt to string together a series of completely unrelated essays, but it has the added effect, in tandem with the regular epigraphs, of giving the book a sense of regular, soothing rhythm that evokes a sense of an arcadian rhythm. Arcadian rhythms actually have their own section in the book, so that works nicely, intentional or not.

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Acquainted With the Night Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Acquainted With the Night is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

what is the significance of family connections within the memoir? You can focus on how Elie"s relationship with his father changes throughout tge novel

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Aquainted with the Night

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Study Guide for Acquainted With the Night

Acquainted With the Night study guide contains a biography of Christopher Dewdney, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis of Acquainted With the Night.

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Essays for Acquainted With the Night

Acquainted With the Night essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Acquainted With the Night by Christopher Dewdney.

The Light of Darkness

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Acquainted With the Night Essay

Acquainted With The Night

depression and loneliness, similar to how the narrator feels in Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night." This poem delves deep into the mind of an anonymous person who is walking through the desolate and empty streets outside a city at night, contemplating their swirling emotions of depression and isolation. Robert Frost uses imagery, a depressive tone, and symbolism to convey the theme of isolation in "Acquainted with the Night."

The poems titled ‘We grow accustomed to the dark”, and “Acquainted with the night”, having very interesting tiles. The poem “We grow accustomed to the dark” title suggests the poem is going to be about the darkness becoming usual to society.The poem “Acquainted with the night” suggests the poem is going to be about being familiar with the night.The poems titles have given an brief conclusion of the poems main topic. The poem “We grow accustomed to the dark”, talked about adjusting to uncertainty

'And Acquainted With The Night'

does not see the light in much things anymore and she has gotten so used to her depressing emotion that she's used to this. In the “Acquainted with the night” also shows us that the author is sort of in a depressed state of mind and sees it as a companion and from the author's frequent use of “I” in every line we can see that he is alone. While in “Acquainted with the night” we read that there are people in the poem but they do not honestly mean much since the people do not actually interact with the

“Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost dramatizes the conflict that the speaker experiences with the outside world, which has rejected him, or perhaps which he has rejected. The poem is composed of fourteen lines and seven sentences, all of which begin with “I have.” Frost’s first and last line, “I have been one acquainted with the night,” emphasizes what it means for the speaker to be “acquainted with the night” (line 1; 14). The speaker describes his walk in the night as journey, in which

Individuals, who feel isolated, aren’t necessarily by themselves; they could be surrounded by people but can’t find it in them to communicate with another individual. The poem, “Acquainted with the Night”, by Robert Frost explores the loneliness and despair associated with depression. Furthermore, the poem uses symbolism, irony, and metaphors to convey the perspective and response of Robert Frost towards a crisis and how it defines the writer. Due to Frost’s usage of symbolism throughout the poem

'Acquainted With The Night'

In analyzing the poem, “Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost, I have noticed that this author uses several literary styles in his writing while telling a story. This poem is a beautifully written, it seems to tell a story pertaining to the author’s own personal experiences with depression and it is quite cleverly written. In this poem, I feel the author is trying to connect to his readers psyche, by letting them know that if you are experiencing depression or have experienced a similar psychological

Acquainted With Night

The night in “Acquainted with Night” represents the authors depression, a depression that has the author feeling alone in the world. The character is completely isolated, with no one that cares about him. The depth of this depression is shown through the tone and word choice, through the watchmen, and finally through the unanswered call. The first thing that shows the authors depression are the word choices and tone used throughout the poem. Frost emphasizes his depression by using the first person

darkness. In the poems, “Acquainted with the Night” and “Desert Places”, poet, Robert Frost portrays a common theme of isolation and how one may differ in their reception of it. Robert Frost depicts the contrasting responses of isolation through his use of language, imagery, and symbolism. First, both poems effectively demonstrate the different receptions of isolation through their use of language. In “Acquainted with the Night” Frost establishes his feelings of the night. Robert Frost personifies

Acquainted With The Night Essay

Hope One may think that at some point of time in one’s life they will go through the tragic stage of darkness and depression. In the poem “Acquainted with the Night”, by Robert Frost, the speaker has gone through the state of darkness and depression, the speaker has inferred on committing suicide. The poet reveals the mood and theme through the use of imagery and symbolism throughout the poem. Throughout the poem, Frost uncovers the theme of isolation and hope through imagery. His diction paints

Isolation In 'Acquainted With The Night'

In the poem, “Acquainted with the Night,” by Robert Frost, the main idea revolves around the physical and emotional isolation that the speaker is feeling. At first glance, the reader might see the poem as only slightly gloomy and dark. However, as the poem develops, it becomes more obvious that the speaker is stuck in a spiral of depression. The speaker states that he has “walked out in rain-and back in rain” to explain that he has been in a recurrent state of emotional isolation (Frost 2). The word