Desert Places
Desert Places - context Summary
Published 1936
Published in 1936 in the collection A Further Range, "Desert Places" reflects Frost’s mature concern with solitude and interior landscape. The poem uses a winter field and falling snow to stage an external emptiness that mirrors a speaker’s inner desolation. Rather than finding cosmic fear in the void between stars, the speaker discovers a more intimate, psychological dread: personal "desert places" that intensify loneliness. As part of Frost’s later work, it emphasizes compressed diction and a contemplative tone, linking rural imagery to existential questions common in his mid-career poems.
Read Complete AnalysesSnow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last. The woods around it have it – it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs. I am too absent-spirited to count; The loneliness includes me unawares. And lonely as it is, that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less – A blanker whiteness of benighted snow WIth no expression, nothing to express. They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars – on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.
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