Desert Places
Robert Frost
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
VOCABULARY
Stubble - spiky growth, in this case the tips of grass
Smothered - covered over thickly with something, in some senses a positive word
that connotes protection, as if the snow is a blanket, but alternatively it could
suggest suppression, choking to stifling
Lair - the hiding place and dwelling of a creature or monster
Absent-spirited - an unusual phrase which Frost seems to have invented for this
poem. It references the common phrase ‘absent-minded’, which means to have one’s
mind elsewhere and not focused on the task at hand. In this sense, we could
interpret ‘absent-spirited’ to mean something similar, that the speaker’s spirit is
elsewhere - his heart and soul aren’t quite present in the moment he’s experiencing.
Unawares - not aware of something
, Ere - before
Benighted - covered in night / darkness
Desert places - this image conjures up the dry, barren desert but also a more
spiritual emptiness, spaces in the soul or mind which are deserted - where nothing
grows or progresses
STORY / SUMMARY
Stanzas 1-2: Snow is falling fast, the speaker watches it filling up the field as he
passes, he observes that it has almost - but not quite - covered up the grass and
plants, only a few tips of the plants remain visible. The snow belongs to the
surrounding woods, and he imagines the animals that are hibernating in their nests
and burrows, asleep under the covering of snow. He is not like them, he is too
‘absent-spirited’, and the fact that he’s not partaking in the laws of nature in
wintertime makes him feel lonely.
Stanzas 3-4: He muses further on this loneliness, it’s only the beginning of winter and
so he knows over the next season he will start to feel more alone before it gets better
(before Spring comes and the animals awaken). He imagines that soon everything will
be covered fully in snow, a blankness that’s devoid of any expression of life. He says
the vast blankness of parts of nature are not frightening or intimidating to him - he is
not scared by the blankness of the snow, nor by the dark gaps between stars in the
sky. He is used to loneliness and blankness, it lies within him, within his own mind and
soul - his own ‘desert places’.
SPEAKER / VOICE
The speaker is an unnamed, solitary traveller who is alone in a vast, white landscape
- even other living entities, such as the surrounding plants and animals, are asleep in
the Wintry setting; only he is awake, and therefore he feels alone, disconnected from
them. The third person pronoun ‘they’ is used in the final stanza: ‘They cannot scare
me with their empty spaces’, this may be referring to the animals and plants,
emblems of nature itself, or to spiritual entities that created the world, such as God
or various gods (if the poem is interpreted in a classical sense). This makes it feel as
if the world around the speaker is hostile towards him, trying to intimidate him in
