A Cliff Dwelling
A Cliff Dwelling - context Summary
Published in 1928
A Cliff Dwelling was published in Robert Frost’s 1928 collection West-Running Brook. The poem situates a tiny human trace—a black cavern hole on a limestone wall—against a vast landscape and deep chronological span. Its context in the late 1920s collection highlights Frost’s recurring interest in rural scenes that register larger historical or existential time. The poem compresses archaeological scale into a brief observation, suggesting the disappearance of an individual and a whole race over “ten thousand years,” and invites readers to consider human absence within geological continuity.
Read Complete AnalysesThere sandy seems the golden sky And golden seems the sandy plain. No habitation meets the eye Unless in the horizon rim, Some halfway up the limestone wall, That spot of black is not a stain Or shadow, but a cavern hole, Where someone used to climb and crawl To rest from his besetting fears. I see the callus on his soul The disappearing last of him And of his race starvation slim, Oh years ago – ten thousand years.
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