“Home Burial”

 Home Burial

Introduction

Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in America. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. One of the most popular and critically respected American poets of the twentieth century, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution." He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetical works.

"Home Burial" is one of Robert Frost's longest poems, and it can also be considered one of his most emotionally disturbing ones. "Home Burial," published in 1914, tells the story of a married couple fighting after their baby has died. It's written mostly in dialogue, so it sounds like real people talking. But this is no ordinary conversation. It tackles the subjects of love, grief, and death, making readers think about each of those common topics in a new way.

You probably know Frost from his shorter poems like "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" or "The Road Not Taken." These poems are often read as inspirational, beautiful odes to nature and exploration. But if you read closely, they have a dark side.

In "Home Burial," there's no missing the dark side. It's right there, staring at you, haunting you long after you finish the poem, just as this couple is haunted by the memory of their dead child.

 

Home Burial [text]

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs

Before she saw him.  She was starting down,

Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.

She took a doubtful step and then undid it

To raise herself and look again.  He spoke

Advancing toward her:  ‘What is it you see

From up there always--for I want to know.'

She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,

And her face changed from terrified to dull.

He said to gain time:  ‘What is it you see,'

Mounting until she cowered under him.

‘I will find out now--you must tell me, dear.'

She, in her place, refused him any help

With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.

She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see,

Blind creature; and awhile he didn’t see.

But at last he murmured, ‘Oh,' and again, ‘Oh.'

‘What is it--what?' she said.

‘Just that I see.'

‘You don’t,' she challenged.  ‘Tell me what it is.'

‘The wonder is I didn’t see at once.

I never noticed it from here before.

I must be wonted to it--that’s the reason.

The little graveyard where my people are!

So small the window frames the whole of it.

Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?

There are three stones of slate and one of marble,

Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight

On the sidehill.  We haven’t to mind those.

But I understand:  it is not the stones,

But the child’s mound--'

‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,' she cried.

She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm

That rested on the bannister, and slid downstairs;

And turned on him with such a daunting look,

He said twice over before he knew himself:

‘Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?'

‘Not you!  Oh, where’s my hat?  Oh, I don’t need it!

I must get out of here.  I must get air.

I don’t know rightly whether any man can.'

‘Amy!  Don’t go to someone else this time.

Listen to me.  I won’t come down the stairs.'

He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.

‘There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.'

‘You don’t know how to ask it.'

‘Help me, then.'

Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

‘My words are nearly always an offense.

I don’t know how to speak of anything

So as to please you.  But I might be taught

I should suppose.  I can’t say I see how.

A man must partly give up being a man

With women-folk.  We could have some arrangement

By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off

Anything special you’re a-mind to name.

Though I don’t like such things ‘twixt those that love.

Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.

But two that do can’t live together with them.'

She moved the latch a little.  ‘Don’t--don’t go.

Don’t carry it to someone else this time.

Tell me about it if it’s something human.

Let me into your grief.  I’m not so much

Unlike other folks as your standing there

Apart would make me out.  Give me my chance.

I do think, though, you overdo it a little.

What was it brought you up to think it the thing

To take your mother--loss of a first child

So inconsolably--in the face of love.

You’d think his memory might be satisfied--'

‘There you go sneering now!'

                                                                            ‘I’m not, I’m not!

You make me angry.  I’ll come down to you.

God, what a woman!  And it’s come to this,

A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.'

‘You can’t because you don’t know how to speak.

If you had any feelings, you that dug

With your own hand--how could you?--his little grave;

I saw you from that very window there,

Making the gravel leap and leap in air,

Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly

And roll back down the mound beside the hole.

I thought, Who is that man?  I didn’t know you.

And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs

To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.

Then you came in.  I heard your rumbling voice

Out in the kitchen, and I don’t know why,

But I went near to see with my own eyes.

You could sit there with the stains on your shoes

Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave

And talk about your everyday concerns.

You had stood the spade up against the wall

Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.'

‘I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.

I’m cursed.  God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.'

‘I can repeat the very words you were saying.

“Three foggy mornings and one rainy day

Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.”

Think of it, talk like that at such a time!

What had how long it takes a birch to rot

To do with what was in the darkened parlor.

You couldn’t care!  The nearest friends can go

With anyone to death, comes so far short

They might as well not try to go at all.

No, from the time when one is sick to death,

One is alone, and he dies more alone.

Friends make pretense of following to the grave,

But before one is in it, their minds are turned

And making the best of their way back to life

And living people, and things they understand.

But the world’s evil.  I won’t have grief so

If I can change it.  Oh, I won’t, I won’t!'

‘There, you have said it all and you feel better.

You won’t go now.  You’re crying.  Close the door.

The heart’s gone out of it:  why keep it up.

Amy!  There’s someone coming down the road!'

‘You--oh, you think the talk is all.  I must go--

Somewhere out of this house.  How can I make you--'

‘If--you--do!'  She was opening the door wider.

‘Where do you mean to go?  First tell me that.

I’ll follow and bring you back by force.  I will!--'

 

Summary

"Home Burial" starts with a husband watching his wife as she walks down the stairs. She pauses to look over her shoulder at something, but won't tell him what. He figures out that she's looking at their child's grave, in the family graveyard, which she can see through the window.
But as the husband climbs the stairs to talk to his wife, she does just about everything she can to avoid talking to her husband about their dead child. She feels trapped, and is trying to leave the house altogether. The husband tries to convince her to just talk to him, but they have major communication issues. He doesn't know how to have a conversation without angering her.
The wife, on the other hand, is so distraught by the loss of her child that she's inconsolable. She can't understand how her husband can carry himself normally when she's been so floored by the loss. The dialogue between the two begins to develop and soon covers their differing perspectives about relationships, life, and death. Still, the conflict is far from finished by the end of the poem.
The poem ends with a cliffhanger. The wife has opened the door to leave, with her husband threatening to go after her and bring her back if she goes. We're left to guess whether or not she manages to get out, and what happens to the couple.

Home Burial: Rhyme, Form & Meter

Blank Verse

This is a dialogue, written in normal-folks language, between a husband and a wife, but that doesn't mean Frost didn't flex his metrical muscles in "Home Burial."
This poem is written in blank verse. This poem is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
But Frost never liked to keep things simple, so he shakes it up here and there with some magical metrical variation. Take, for example, lines 31 and 32:
"But the child's mound — —"
"Don't, don't, don't, don't' she cried."
Frost breaks up the complete line of iambic pentameter into two lines of dialogue (but he indents the woman's line, so we'll be sure to connect the meters together). Squish them together and you get ten syllables. But we definitely don't have just five stresses in this line.
In the first half, we have three. And then, each instance of the word "don't" in the second line is a strong stressed syllable, as well as the word "cried." That makes for eight—count 'em—stresses in one iambic pentameter line.
Why pack in so many stresses? Well, this is one of the most intense and urgent moments in the poem. We have finally found out what's really coming between this fighting couple, and the poet is packing the meter with stress to show us that these two are under a lot of  stress.
If you're feeling dramatic, you might try reading this poem aloud with a friend (one can play the woman, the other her husband). This might help you spot the places where Frost is straying from the daDUM rhythm of iambic pentameter. And we think you'll find that in the places where he's shaking things up, he's doing so for a reason. Frost was a metrical master, and he knew how to make meter make meaning.

Point of View

We hear from a few different speakers in this poem.

The Fly on the Wall

First, we've got the third person narrator, who gives us lines of description and sets the scene. This narrator doesn't have much personality of his own, and he doesn't seem to be leaning one way or the other in this fight between husband and wife. He just tells us the facts—he did this, she said that—and lets the duo speak for themselves.

Husband and Wife

We've got our two main characters. Even though the poem never talks directly about a marriage, given that these two people live together, have had a child, and this poem was published in 1914, it's a safe assumption to make that the couple in this poem is married, however unhappily.

The man is more at home in this house than his wife. It's his family house, and the people in the graveyard on the property are his people. He also takes pride in his manliness. He's tough, and doesn't show his grief, if he's feeling it. This makes it so that it's pretty tough for him to communicate with his wife, but it also means that when he speaks, it's with a certain authority. He thinks he knows what's up and what's best. That probably makes conversation with the missus even tougher.

The wife, on the other hand, comes at this conversation from an entirely different perspective. She's floored by her grief about her dead child. She's inconsolable, and her entire views on life and death have been warped by her loss. Through most of the poem, her responses to her husband's demands are nonverbal. She's closed off to him, and it shows. When she does finally open up, his responses don't even come close to addressing her concerns.

And here we are, flies on the wall, just like our original narrator. You'd be forgiven if, as you listen to this couple go at it, you cringe a little bit from being an awkward bystander. That's exactly how you're supposed to feel. This is a serious fight with no simple solutions. So let's slink away and leave these two to it.

Home Burial : Setting

Where It All Goes Down

Although we're getting most of our info in the dialogue of two characters, we get a ton of information about where this poem goes down. For one thing, this poem was originally published in a collection called North of Boston, which means we're in New England, a place Frost knew well. Plus, we know we're in an old house with a graveyard out back, within view of the window.

Below that window, there's a stairway, leading to an entryway. And it's on these stairs and in this vestibule where most of this poem takes place. The kitchen is within earshot (which we know because when the woman stood looking out the window before, she could here her husband in there), and it seems like there's a parlor (in modern words, a living room) nearby as well. So we've got a relatively big house.

So we've got the lay of the land down pat. But other than that, we don't get a ton of detail. After all, there's not much cause for a married couple to wax poetic about the drapery smack in the middle of a knockdown, drag-out fight.

A House Is Not a Home

What we do know is the emotional details of this environment. Frost cleverly uses the details of the setting and the way the characters interact with it to reflect their sorry emotional states.

The husband clearly feels at home here. It's where his family is buried, after all. The wife, however, feels trapped. She wants air, and makes several attempts to walk right out the front door. In her case, this house, and the man in it, do not add up to a home.

Plus, there's the power dynamic between these two that the setting reflects. For most of the poem, we see the characters interacting on the staircase. The couple's shifting positions on the flight of stairs show us the power within their relationship in a very visual way. When the woman is at the top of the stairs, she has the power, but then the man comes up and takes it from her. Yet, when she's at the bottom of the stairs, she gets a new source of power from the doorway, through which she can escape.

Home Burial: Themes

Loneliness

While Frost's poems are often read as uplifting, there's almost always a lonely, dark side to them. Though we see two characters interacting in this poem, they are, at heart, totally lonely. Even the house where the poem takes place is lonely, with only a graveyard to keep it company. And then we get that doozy of a line: "One is alone, and he dies more alone" (105). You might want to keep this line in mind as you read some other Frost masterpieces, like "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" or "Mending Wall." They might not be as upbeat as you once thought.

Language and Communication

Although "Home Burial" takes place mostly in dialogue, this couple sure doesn't do a whole lot of communicating. At first, the woman will hardly speak to the man at all. Then, when she finally opens up, he hardly listens to what she says. In other words, this poem isn't a conversation; it's a fight. In that sense, it's as much about the communications between this husband and wife pair as it is about the events in their lives related to the poem.

Power

As this couple battles through this painful conversation about the "Home Burial," the power in the relationship shifts between the two. Sometimes, one person has all the power, and sometimes, it's the other. But most of the time it's somewhere in the middle, which makes things especially interesting. While they fight about their dead child, they also fight for control over the conversation, and control in their relationship.

Sadness

The communication problems in "Home Burial" stem partly from the different ways that the characters address their grief. The man seems to have no problem carrying on with his everyday life, while the woman is totally inconsolable. Throughout the poem, you can see the ways that she gets offended by his lack of grief, and how he doesn't understand, and is frustrated by, her extreme sadness. In the end, they just can't understand each other, and they just can't get past the divide in their sadness.

Gender

"Home Burial," published in 1914, shows a household scene from its time, an era when women were still not even allowed to vote. The different gender roles in this poem complicate the power relationships, and make the emotional communication between characters more difficult. The husband makes derogatory comments towards women, and the wife makes derogatory comments towards men. Call us pessimistic, but we have a feeling they're not going to meet in the middle anytime soon.

 

Death

In the poem  "Home Burial," death has to play a big part. It just has to. But in this poem, it's pretty much the elephant in the room. It colors every line of dialogue in this couple's conversation, but they hardly ever mention the word. It's almost as if, for this couple, using the word "dead," or talking directly about the death of their child, makes his passing all the more real, and their grief more painful. But death is real, and it's driving a wedge between these two.