Mowing
Mowing - context Summary
Published in 1913
Mowing was first published in Robert Frost’s 1913 collection A Boy's Will and reflects his rural experience and work as a farmer. The poem presents a speaker engaged in the quiet, focused labor of cutting hay, finding in the scythe’s whisper an affirmation of honest, physical work over fanciful dreams or easy gains. Its tone links practical labor to ethical clarity: the truthful product of toil is sweeter than imagined rewards. Understanding Frost’s agricultural background and the poem’s place in his early collection helps readers see its thematic consistency with his interest in nature and vocation.
Read Complete AnalysesThere was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound– And that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. The fact is the sweetest dream that labour knows. My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.
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