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Amanda Le
Mr. Mathews
AP English Literature (3)
20 March 2014
Steady Love
In his poem To Earthward, Robert Frost uses enjambment and imagery in order to
create an accelerating pace that evokes in the reader an image of tumbling to earth and illustrates
the speakers transition from desiring idealistic, passionate love to that grounded in maturity and
stability.
The overarching image of the poem is of falling or becoming grounded as the speaker
loses his youthful perception of love for a more powerful, albeit painful relationship. Whereas
sentences contained within verses in a consistent pattern create a steady rhythm, enjambment
leaves the reader with no time to pause at the end of a verse. In To Earthward, the reader is
forced to make jumps over visual breaks because of sentences that begin at the end of one verse
but are continued in the next. Occurring twice in the poem (I lived on air / That crossed me
from sweet things, I crave the stain / Of tears, the aftermark,) enjambment pulls the reader
downward; this accelerates the reading pace, which parallels the image of the speaker falling to
earth.
Tactile and gustatory imagery also contribute to the falling sense of the poem. At the
beginning of the poem, the speaker evokes a sense of airiness and suspension, describing touch
/ as sweet as I could bear and sprays of honeysuckle / That when theyre gathered shake / Dew
on the knuckle. The repeated mentioning of sweetness and delicateness reinforces the speakers
initial idea of love: carefree and full of pleasure. As the poem progresses, the imagery moves
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also from airiness to groundedness. The flowery sweetness of youth is replaced by descriptions
of joy but lacks salt / That is not dashed with pain and the sweet of bitter bark / And burning
clove. These descriptions evoke a sense of gravity and heaviness. Salt and bitterness, as
opposed to the sweetness of honeysuckle, become the dominant tastes, and the burning pain of
the earth overshadows the bliss of being in the air. Finally, as stiff and sore and scarred / I take
away my hand, the speaker conveys the tactile experience of feeling the earth beneath his
bloodied hands. The image is complete with the speaker reaching the ground; though this type of
love is far from perfect, it is true and strong.