A Dream Pang Analysis

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song
Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;
And to the forest edge you came one day
(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,
But did not enter, though the wish was strong:
You shook your pensive head as who should say,
‘I dare not--too far in his footsteps stray--
He must seek me would he undo the wrong.

Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all
Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;
And the sweet pang it cost me not to call
And tell you that I saw does still abide.
But 'tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,
For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

.: A Dream Pang Analysis :.

The trickiest part of this poem seems to be the final couplet. To understand it best I think it is necessary to understand exactly what is represented by the forest. The woods are a reccuring theme in much of Frost's work and carry slightly different meanings from poem to poem but most always signify isolation from other people. Frost has seen this isolation to be both positive and negative at various times. In this poem he intentionally withwdraws into the forest creating a compound metaphor for isolation both within the forest as well as within his state of sleeping. This being a dream, it would does not matter tremendously that the person addressed (presumably a woman) does not enter into the woods to meet Frost since it is the thought of her that enters into his dream and not the woman herself. So while he sees her and it pangs him not to be with her, he notes that at that moment his apparent immobility within the dream was only an illusion. Had he moved within the dream out from the woods to be with her, it would have only confronted one half of the compounded metaphor of isolation, leaving him still asleep and away from the actual being of her. Instead the thought of her wakes him from the dream entirely where she is there with him and his spell of isolation is dissolved.

| Posted on 2008-04-06 | by a guest