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User Rating:
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5.5
/10
(117 votes)
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The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run --
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.
Robert Frost
| Submitted Date |
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Monday, January 13, 2003 |
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Read poems about / on: city, water, flower, strength, house, work, sleep, fear, running, rose, tree
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Comments about this poem (A Brook In The City
by
Robert Frost
) |
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Fiona O'connor (5/26/2010 9:19:00 PM)
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This poem is an amazing work of art. In this poem it speaks about a river and how strong it was. The river was in nature before the nature there was destroyed for a fancy street. The deeper meaning would be that people destroy majestic, beautiful things for things they believe is important and gorgeous in its own way. The farmhouse was there when the river was there, I am assuming. It represents time and it has watched what has happened in a resigned exasperated way. We destroy things that may be better than the things we kill them for. It may have related to the holocaust but that is how I relate it to my life.
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Hilary Lambert (1/1/2010 4:35:00 PM)
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Hi
Wow you all got pretty riled up about Dimitri's interesting interpretation. However the poem was first published in a 1924 collection, pre-dating the camps. I think it really may be about a brook being polluted and buried by city growth. But Dimitri, your interpretation will haunt me.
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Matt Schuster (11/22/2009 10:01:00 PM)
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Hey Adolf-I wish it was your family getting killed you prick
Jake-Yours too
You people have no respect
How do you hate on Jews because we're prosperous and wealthy?
You have no one else to blame but yourselves for being bitter failures.
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Jake Simasko (6/24/2009 12:45:00 PM)
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I completely agree with you Mr. Hitler, I remember those days, all those jews that died cause they were stupid fags
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Joe Osullivan (5/25/2009 8:51:00 PM)
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I find the depth of Frost's poems in the fact that it seems to me that he is at the same time referring very observing a very natural event in New England farm life, an observation on our relationship with the wild and old ways, and alluding to our relationship with that which is wild and and natural in our own souls and psyches. How we age, what we fear, how we relate to death and other people. Each poem can be read quite well in any of these ways.
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Andrew Hoellering (2/24/2009 2:38:00 PM)
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This poem can be read alongside Hyla Brook as a fine example of Frost's empathy with nature, which we exploit at our cost. As always, Frost was way ahead of his time.
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Kentucky Refugee (7/4/2008 2:25:00 PM)
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I love this poem. Rather than speaking of the Holocaust, I believe that it speaks of the power and strength of living an authentic life not ruled by fear. The metaphor of a constant stream of true self which underlies cement walks of civilization which would keep us from our true destiny is one that I find very compelling.
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Dimitri Boukas (3/16/2008 10:20:00 PM)
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I honestly hate this poem. This poem brings me back to the time of the Holocaust. Jews were being burned alive and incarcerated while the Germans just sat back watched this disaster happen. Please remove this poem from this website.
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