This poem works off the premise that as we grow older our jaded senses require ever stronger stimuli to engage them. I am not sure that this is entirely true. If it is true then what on earth are today’s young disco fans going to do in later life when they want to up their aural ante? Stand next to a Saturn rocket on takeoff? But let’s grant the poet his perception. The quest for such ever-increasing stimuli leads the poet to a darkly ironic imagining of the grave as the ultimate sensory experience: ‘to feel the earth as rough/To all my length’. This may seem morbid, but there is a paradox here: Frost, who had a good deal of personal tragedy in his life, may indeed at times have been, like Keats, ‘half in love with easeful death’, but that does not stop poems like this one from being a sensuous affirmation of life. The same paradox is to be found in ‘Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening’ (see week 490), where a longing for the final sleep does not preclude the exquisite sensibility of ‘easy wind and downy flake’.

To Earthward

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of – was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Down hill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they’re gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.

Robert Frost