The Oft-repeated Dream
The Oft-repeated Dream - context Summary
Published in a Further Range
This brief three-stanza lyric was published in Frost’s 1936 collection A Further Range. It presents a domestic nocturnal image—a pine repeatedly testing a window latch in an "oft-repeated dream"—in compressed, narrative terms. As a contextual note, the poem appears amid Frost’s mature work of the 1930s, when he published shorter, tightly controlled pieces that often dramatize a single striking moment or mood. The poem’s placement in A Further Range situates it within the later phase of Frost’s career and the collection’s attention to quiet, unsettling scenes.
Read Complete AnalysesShe had no saying dark enough For the dark pine that kept Forever trying the window latch Of the room where they slept. The tireless but ineffectual hands That with every futile pass Made the great tree seem as a little bird Before the mystery of glass! It never had been inside the room, And only one of the two Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream Of what the tree might do.
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