Acceptance
Acceptance - form Summary
A Sonnet of Resignation
This poem is a sonnet that frames a speaker’s peaceful acceptance through a small natural scene. Frost uses the sonnet’s compressed shape to move from description—sunset and birds settling—to a quiet inward turn in which the bird’s muted thought becomes a gesture of acquiescence: let night be dark, let the future be unknown. The form’s tight meters and concluding lines concentrate the mood of resignation without alarm, suggesting acceptance as a calm, ordinary response modeled in nature rather than a dramatic revelation.
Read Complete AnalysesWhen the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud And goes down burning into the gulf below, No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud At what has happened. Birds, at least must know It is the change to darkness in the sky. Murmuring something quiet in her breast, One bird begins to close a faded eye; Or overtaken too far from his nest, Hurrying low above the grove, some waif Swoops just in time to his remembered tree. At most he thinks or twitters softly, ‘Safe! Now let the night be dark for all of me. Let the night bee too dark for me to see Into the future. Let what will be, be.’
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