The Flood
The Flood - context Summary
Published 1942, a Witness Tree
Published in 1942 in the collection A Witness Tree, Robert Frost’s "The Flood" frames a compact meditation on rediscovery and renewal. Using flood and drowned-wood imagery, the poem describes two people stumbling into an unexpected, restorative companionship that revives what seemed petrified or lost. Its tone is spare and contemplative, presenting love as an unsought but awaited force that resurrects emotional life. Placed in Frost’s later output, the poem aligns with his recurring interest in human connection, memory, and the quiet, transformative moments that reverse isolation.
Read Complete AnalysesCasually they shed words, and there, Like a never-known companion, rose What only the unsought moment knows, Discovery, that two can share And restore to sapling with surprise The wood the water petrifies, The sunken gopher ark in rain As deep as the god-wrath after Cain. They lifted this to the tree again As they shed words, and piled the shore They never thought would reappear, Living millenniums apart.… In sudden pairs we find the pain To float once more the flooded heart; Give sap to shipwreck washed to stone, And rescued, two together grown To the resurrected landfall one, Stand in the passion love puts on, The unsought yet awaited love, Far from the rainbow of the dove.
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