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Rex Linus Telmo Student

Eldren Suaybaguio Teacher

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 after mark 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.

“To Earthward” by Robert Frost exemplifies the concept of how attraction and love change over the years from youth to bitter love to a love that craves relief from the pain of life. Frost begins the poem’s first stanza with the lines “Love at the lips was touch/As sweet as I could bear”. With this opening phrase Frost shows that youthful love is consumed with simple kissing and the simple art of kissing is like a sweet. This was so sweet that he could scarcely bear it. Frost uses the alliterative words “love” and “lips” to emphasize the image of kissing without using the word “kiss”. The last two lines of the quatrain are “And once that seemed too much; I lived on air.” With these lines, Frost creates the image that as wonderfully sweet as kisses were, the narrator didn’t need sweets to feel the person’s love because all that was needed was air. This would give the association that just breathing the same air as one’s lover is just as sweet. In the second stanza, Frost asks a question, as if the narrator needs reminders of the smells that were in the air at the time. He recalls the smells of musk and honeysuckle as well as the dew that shakes off when flowers are picked for one’s lover in the morning. The images of flowers, dew, and sweets portray the youth of the narrator and the desires of young lovers as well as their inexperienced forays into romance. In the next three to four stanzas, Frost takes a darker turn. Frost uses words and phrases that indicate that the love did not stay as sweet as it once was. Phrases that indicate this are “petals of the rose…stung”, “dashed with pain”, “no joy”, “weariness”, and “fault”. While none of these phrases elaborate on events that happened, the words are loaded with negative and bitter connotations. Normally one would indicate thorns would sting on a rose, but in this case the petals stung. This paradoxical phrase would indicate the horrific contrast between someone that could be so sweet could also be so wickedly hurtful. The results were only pain and fault, which would be bitterness. If this period of bitterness represents most of adult life, it would indicate that the narrator did not get over the hurts throughout life.
By the final two stanzas, there is another change in tone. In the final stanza Frost uses the image of someone lying

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To Earthward

By Robert Frost

Analyzation

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To Earthward

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