A Hillside Thaw Analysis

To think to know the country and now know

The hillside on the day the sun lets go

Ten million silver lizards out of snow!

As often as I've seen it done before

I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.

It looks as if some magic of the sun

Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor

And the light breaking on them made them run.

But if I though to stop the wet stampede,

And caught one silver lizard by the tail,

And put my foot on one without avail,

And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneed

In front of twenty others' wriggling speed,--

In the confusion of them all aglitter,

And birds that joined in the excited fun

By doubling and redoubling song and twitter,

I have no doubt I'd end by holding none.



It takes the moon for this. The sun's a wizard

By all I tell; but so's the moon a witch.

From the high west she makes a gentle cast

And suddenly, without a jerk or twitch,

She has her speel on every single lizard.

I fancied when I looked at six o'clock

The swarm still ran and scuttled just as fast.

The moon was waiting for her chill effect.

I looked at nine: the swarm was turned to rock

In every lifelike posture of the swarm,

Transfixed on mountain slopes almost erect.

Across each other and side by side they lay.

The spell that so could hold them as they were

Was wrought through trees without a breath of storm

To make a leaf, if there had been one, stir.

One lizard at the end of every ray.

The thought of my attempting such a stray!

.: :.

Here frost discusses the idea that we can only truly understand our thoughts and emotions in an altered state of consciousness. In this case, the first stanza in the daytime, represents our conscious thought and actions, and the second stanza and the moon represent our dreamlike altered state of consciousness (whatever that may be). I believe that the melting snow/ice (or 'lizards') symbolize our thoughts and emotions, and that Frost has the opinion that it is futile for us to attempt to understand these subjects consciously as it takes something decidedly more abstract than conscious thought to divine any meaning from them.

| Posted on 2008-11-24 | by a guest