A Late Walk
WHEN I go up through the mowing field,The headless aftermath,Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,Half closes the garden path.And when I come to the garden ground,The whir of sober birdsUp from the tangle of withered weedsIs sadder than any words.A tree beside the wall stands bare,But a leaf that lingered brown,Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,Comes softly rattling down.I end not far from my going forthBy picking the faded blueOf the last remaining aster flowerTo carry again to you.
Words in this poem
- headless a.
- Having no head; beheaded; as, a headless body, neck, or carcass. [AS. heáfodleás.]
- tangle v. t.
- To unite or knit together confusedly; to interweave or interlock, as threads, so as to make it difficult to unravel the knot; to entangle; to ravel. [A frequentative fr. tang seaweed; hence, to twist like seaweed. See Tang seaweed, and cf. Tangle, n.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Late Walk is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Boy's Will, Project Gutenberg ebook #3021; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Frost, A Late Walk, in A Boy's Will (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3021, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/frost-boys-will/a-late-walk.html, id L04623.
Form and metre
A Late Walk is 16 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%). 82% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.7 syllables. 31% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 -ABA-C-C-D-D-B-B field · aftermathA · dewB · pathA · ground · birdsC · weeds · wordsC · bare · brownD · thought · downD · forth · blueB · flower · youB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| WHEN I go up through the mowing field, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| The headless aftermath, | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| Half closes the garden path. | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
| And when I come to the garden ground, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| The whir of sober birds | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Up from the tangle of withered weeds | 9 | ···/˘·/˘· |
| Is sadder than any words. | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
| A tree beside the wall stands bare, | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| But a leaf that lingered brown, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought, | 8 | ˘/······ |
| Comes softly rattling down. | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| I end not far from my going forth | 8 | ······/· |
| By picking the faded blue | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
| Of the last remaining aster flower | 9 | ···˘/˘/˘/ |
| To carry again to you. | 7 | ·/˘˘/·· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.