The Line-gang
The Line-gang - context Summary
Published in 1914
Published in 1914 in the North of Boston collection, Robert Frost's "The Line-Gang" records a specific cultural moment when telephone and telegraph lines penetrated rural New England. The poem watches laborers felling trees and stretching wires, noting how mechanical connection alters both landscape and local life. Frost frames this intrusion with a mix of pragmatic detail and ironic distance, registering admiration for technological reach alongside awareness of its disruption. The piece fits Frost's early work in documenting rural change and the tension between tradition and modernization.
Read Complete AnalysesHere come the line-gang pioneering by, They throw a forest down less cut than broken. They plant dead trees for living, and the dead They string together with a living thread. They string an instrument against the sky Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken Will run as hushed as when they were a thought But in no hush they string it: they go past With shouts afar to pull the cable taught, To hold it hard until they make it fast, To ease away — they have it. With a laugh, An oath of towns that set the wild at naught They bring the telephone and telegraph.
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