READING: POEM
Two Look at Two
ROBERT FROST
Robert Frost (1874–1963) is a major American poet whose work often focuses on familiar objects, natural scenes, and the character of New England. In his early life Frost was a farmer and teacher; later he became a poet in residence at Amherst College and taught at Dartmouth, Yale, and Harvard. Frost was awarded Pulitzer Prizes for four collections of poems: New Hampshire (1923), from which “Two Look at Two” is taken; Collected Poems (1930); A Further Range (1936); and A Witness Tree (1942). As you read the selection, use the questions in the preceding worksheet to think critically about the poem.
Love and forgetting might have carried them
A little further up the mountain side
With night so near, but not much further up.
They must have halted soon in any case
5
With thoughts of the path back, how rough it was
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
When they were halted by a tumbled wall
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,
Spending what onward impulse they still had
10
In one last look the way they must not go,
On up the failing path, where, if a stone
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;
No footstep moved it. “This is all,” they sighed,
“Good-night to woods.” But not so; there was more.
15
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
She saw them in their field, they her in hers.
The difficulty of seeing what stood still,
Like some up-ended boulder split in two,
20
Was in her clouded eyes: they saw no fear there.
She seemed to think that two thus they were safe.
Then, as if they were something that, though strange,
She could not trouble her mind with too long,
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.
25
“This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?”
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait.
A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril,
30
Not the same doe come back into her place.
He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head,
As if to ask, “Why don’t you make some motion?
Or give some sign of life? Because you can’t.
I doubt if you’re as living as you look.”
35
Thus till he had them almost feeling dared
To stretch a proffering hand—and a spell-breaking.
Then he too passed unscared along the wall.
Two had seen two, whichever side you spoke from.
“This must be all.” It was all. Still they stood,
A great wave from it going over them,
40
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favor
Had made them certain earth returned their love.
The poem takes place on a mountainside path, near dusk. A couple walking along the path finds a tumbled wall. Looking beyond the wall, the couple encounters first a doe and then a buck. The doe and buck stare at the human couple and vice versa; hence the title “Two Look at Two” Neither the animals nor the humans are frightened; both couples observe each other and continue with their lives. The action is described by a third-person narrator who can read the thoughts of the humans. The speaker creates an objective tone by reporting events as they occur.
In “Two Look at Two,” Frost considers the relationship between humans and nature. The wall is symbolic of the separation between them. Beyond the wall the couple looks at “the way they must not go” (line 10). Although humans and nature are separate, they are also equal and in balance. These qualities are suggested by the title as well as by the actions of both couples as they observe each other in a nonthreatening way. The third-person point of view contributes to this balance in that the poem’s narrator is an outside observer rather than a participant. One possible theme of the poem, therefore, is the balance and equality between humans and nature.
As you read the following poem, “How I Discovered Poetry,” by Marilyn Nelson, use the guidelines for reading a poem and the worksheet to help you analyze its elements and discover its meaning.