Hyla Brook
Hyla Brook - meaning Summary
Affection Without Explanation
Frost depicts a New England brook that has lost its song and visible flow by June. The speaker imagines the stream either running underground with its chorus of Hyla frogs or reduced to a faded bed edged by weak jewel-weed. These quiet, ambiguous possibilities lead to a philosophical ending: acceptance of things as they are. The poem resists sentimentalizing nature and insists that affection need not be justified or explained. The final line reframes the landscape scene as a claim about love and perception rather than a literal explanation of change.
Read Complete AnalysesBy June our brook’s run out of song and speed. Sought for much after that, it will be found Either to have gone groping underground (And taken with it all the Hyla breed That shouted in the mist a month ago, Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)– Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed, Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent Even against the way its waters went. Its bed is left a faded paper sheet Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat– A brook to none but who remember long. This as it will be seen is other far Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song. We love the things we love for what they are.
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