In Robert Frost’s Acquainted With The Night, the traditional iambic pentameter and ending couplet of a sonnet can be seen along with internal rhymes. The first person narrator gives a brief explanation of how he has been acquainted with the night. The tense is past and the tone is serious with negative overtones. Acquainted With The Night is an unusual poem to be written by Frost because this poem has left the forest and countryside settings and come to the city to take place. This poem is about a man’s isolation from society and the darkness of his spirit.
Every sentence in this poem, of which there are only a total of seven, begins with “I” clearly representing isolation. The first line of the first stanza states “I have been one acquainted with the night,” not “I am.” This suggests a past circumstance of the narrator’s life. To be “acquainted” is to know and not necessarily to be a friend of or to know very well. Yet, the narrator is claiming to know quite well what the night is like. In line two, “out in rain – and back in rain.” is presented as a sad and sorrowful image to be pitied. This could also be taken as a bad or unpleasant situation in the narrator’s life on a larger level. The narrator, however, may have endured this status by choice because he seems to be bragging about his experience. To “have outwalked the furthest city light” refers to voluntarily going beyond the safety of the light and the companionship of the city. This first stanza sets the solemn and solitary mood for the poem.
The internal rhymes in the first stanza echo “acquainted” with “rain,” “walked” with “outwalked”, and “rain…rain” with the “R” sound repeating again in the stressed syllable of “furthest.” This is significant because of the connection first with “acquainted” and “rain” emphasizing the sorrow of, as I see it, two negatives of imperfection. With “walked” and “outwalked,” the repetition implies a tiring continuum of walking or searching and also signals back to the repetition of “in rain – and back in rain” forming an exhausted image. The “R” sound in “furthest” sends hints back to the negativity and loneliness of the rain. This, I believe, is implying imperfection, incompleteness, and sadness.
The second stanza begins with the narrator looking down “the saddest city lane.” The word “lane” reminds me faintly of the common countryside setting of Frost’s poetry. A sad lane seems strange, but the narrator sees the street as just so. I believe the lane being sad is connected to the quest the narrator was on and because the narrator was sad. He does not walk the lane he simply looks down it almost as if he had given up. Assuming, perhaps, the lane did not have the answer he was looking for, nor would it have led him to it.
The only person encountered in this poem is in the fifth line and it is “the watchman on his beat.” The narrator only “passed by” him, they did not speak. In fact, they did not even make eye contact because the narrator did not want to be expected to “explain.” The only person encountered in the poem is a judgmental authority figure who is avoided.
In the third stanza the narrator is alone again; so alone, in fact, his footsteps are the only footsteps. He was walking alone when he heard a “cry”, not a shout or a call but a very sorrowful image a “cry,” and it was far away. The “cry” didn’t come from a house on the street he was on, it came all the way “over houses from another street,” showing the narrator’s extreme detachment from society. The sound that might have given him some companionship in this desert place wasn’t even a whole. It was interrupted.
In the fourth stanza, the sentence of the third stanza continues. This continuation is an unusual break from the mainly short sentences of the fist two stanzas. Here, the narrator emphasizes negativity by the lengthy line seeming to drag out and dwell on the topic, and by telling the “cry” was not to comfort him by making him feel needed or wanted or to “say good-by.” The narrator tells nothing about the “cry” other than it was not close and it was not to him. He does not say what it WAS only what it WAS NOT nor does he say if it was answered. This makes the thought negative and incomplete much like the “cry” itself.
Next, the narrator is alone again except for the moon in the sky which is “further still” and “at an unearthly height.” So it is even less a comfort than the unfriendly “watchman” and the “interrupted cry” had been. The moon is a “clock” a time keeper, a restriction. It is “One,” “against the sky” as if it was viewed as signally opposing a huge unknown (the night sky). And by being a luminous “clock” it is bright and almost a positive image while keeping order.
Unlike the “watchman” the moon does not seem to be a judgmental figure. The moon is the closest thing to a positive image in the whole poem. In the ending couplet, the moon declares “the time” to be “neither wrong nor right.” This appears to make this negative experience for the narrator a passing phase instead of a permanent state. It makes an indecisive, unclear statement which seems to justify and satisfy the narrator.
The last line is the same as the first line. This gives the poem an ironic completeness in contrast with the theme of incompleteness seen throughout out the poem. This last line is also the common understatement found in many of Frost’s poems. The narrator has, all too well, been acquainted with the night.
This poem seems to have the classic quest motif in which the narrator’s night walk is symbolic of isolation and detachment from his surroundings in both social and natural aspects, but there is no concrete answer to end the quest. The separation from man to man (the watchman and the cry) and from man to nature (the unreachable moon) have a constant effect on humanity in this poem. The separation and negativity in this poem is oddly deliberate by the narrator and seems to directly parallel the strange “short then long” sentences and internal rhymes all crammed into the varied form of a sonnet.
The only conclusion given by the poem is that of acceptance. It seems that after the dark journey of searching the streets and the soul, the narrator was forced to realize that there is not an answer that will cure his isolation and detachment from society. The ending rhymes of the last two lines “right” and “night” seem to echo like a sigh of relief as if the narrator is pleased these thoughts are over and are memories.
The night walk described here in this poem is one, I believe, everyone takes at least once during the course of life. The reality of society and its apathy is frightening when the darkness that surrounds it and us is unstoppable and beyond understandingg. It is in times ofdespairr and fear that we, as humans, look to higher powers for answers and enlightenment and then feel even more isolated.
