Good Hours
Good Hours - context Summary
Published in 1916
“Good Hours” appears in Robert Frost’s 1916 collection Mountain Interval. The short lyric follows a solitary winter evening walk in which the speaker projects life into warmly lit cottages, briefly enjoying imagined companionship through sights and sounds. Turning away and returning, he discovers the windows dark and the village asleep, underscoring a shift from comforting illusion to stark solitude. The poem situates Frost’s characteristic rural New England setting and explores how imagination temporarily fills social absence, only to give way to the realities of isolation.
Read Complete AnalysesI had for my winter evening walk- No one at all with whom to talk, But I had the cottages in a row Up to their shining eyes in snow. And I thought I had the folk within: I had the sound of a violin; I had a glimpse through curtain laces Of youthful forms and youthful faces. I had such company outward bound. I went till there were no cottages found. I turned and repented, but coming back I saw no window but that was black. Over the snow my creaking feet Disturbed the slumbering village street Like profanation, by your leave, At ten o’clock of a winter eve.
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