"Desert Places" can be read both as a meditation on humanity's isolation in the grand scheme of the cosmos and as a reflection of the speaker's personal loneliness. This speaker, traveling at night in a snowstorm, feels profoundly alone while watching white "blankness" cover a nearby field. This blankness seems to reflect nature's general indifference toward humanity, and it may also reflect the speaker's own internal sense of detachment and desolation. The speaker finds such "desert places"—that is, the empty, isolated spaces of the earth and/or of the mind—as frightening to contemplate as the vast void of outer space. One of Robert Frost's enduringly popular poems, "Desert Places" was first published in 1934 and later collected in the Pulitzer Prize-winning volume A Further Range (1936).

• Read the full text of “Desert Places”

• “Desert Places” Summary

• “Desert Places” Themes

  • 

    Humanity's Place in the Universe

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-16
  • 

    Loneliness, Alienation, and Creative Anxiety

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Line 1
    • Lines 5-16

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Desert Places”

  • Lines 1-4

    Snow falling and ...
    ... stubble showing last.

    

    

    

    

    Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

  • Lines 5-8

    The woods around ...
    ... includes me unawares.

    

    

    

    

    Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

  • Lines 9-12

    And lonely as ...
    ... nothing to express.

    

    

    

    

    Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

  • Lines 13-16

    They cannot scare ...
    ... own desert places.

    

    

    

    

    Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• “Desert Places” Symbols

  • 

    Snow

    Where this symbol appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-4
    • Line 6
    • Lines 9-12
  • 

    Woods

    Where this symbol appears in the poem:

    • Line 5: “The woods around it have it—it is theirs.”

• “Desert Places” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

  • Alliteration

    

    

    

    

    Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

    Where alliteration appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “falling,” “falling fast,” “fast”
    • Line 2: “field”
    • Line 3: “smooth,” “snow”
    • Line 9: “lonely,” “loneliness”
    • Line 10: “lonely,” “less”
    • Line 11: “blanker,” “benighted”
    • Line 12: “no,” “expression,” “nothing,” “express”
    • Line 13: “scare,” “spaces”
    • Line 14: “stars,” “stars”

  • Assonance

    

    

    

    

    Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

    Where assonance appears in the poem:

    • Line 6: “their lairs”
    • Line 11: “whiteness,” “benighted,” “snow”
    • Line 12: “no”
    • Line 15: “so,” “home”
    • Line 16: “own”

  • Parallelism

    

    

    

    

    Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

    Where parallelism appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “Snow falling,” “night falling”
    • Line 12: “no expression, nothing to express.”
    • Line 14: “Between stars—on stars”

  • Diacope

    

    

    

    

    Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

    Where diacope appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “falling,” “falling,” “fast,” “fast”
    • Line 8: “loneliness”
    • Line 9: “lonely,” “loneliness”
    • Line 10: “Will be,” “lonely,” “will be”
    • Line 12: “expression,” “express”
    • Line 14: “stars,” “stars”

  • Metaphor

    

    

    

    

    Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

    Where metaphor appears in the poem:

    • Line 6: “All animals are smothered in their lairs.”
    • Lines 11-12: “A blanker whiteness of benighted snow / With no expression, nothing to express.”

  • Juxtaposition

    

    

    

    

    Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

    Where juxtaposition appears in the poem:

    • Lines 13-16: “They cannot scare me with their empty spaces / Between stars—on stars where no human race is. / I have it in me so much nearer home / To scare myself with my own desert places.”

  • Enjambment

    

    

    

    

    Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

    Where enjambment appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-2: “fast / In”
    • Lines 9-10: “loneliness / Will”
    • Lines 13-14: “spaces / Between”
    • Lines 15-16: “home / To”

• “Desert Places” Vocabulary

  Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

  • Stubble
  • Lairs
  • Absent-spirited
  • Unawares
  • Ere
  • Benighted
  • Desert
  • (Location in poem: Line 4: “But a few weeds and stubble showing last.”)

• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Desert Places”

  • Form

  • Meter

  • Rhyme Scheme

• “Desert Places” Speaker

• “Desert Places” Setting

• Literary and Historical Context of “Desert Places”

• More “Desert Places” Resources

  • External Resources

    • The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem, courtesy of The Frost Place.

    • The Poet's Life and Work — Read a biography of Frost at Poets.org.

    • More on Frost — A video biography of the poet.

    • Frost's Ideas About the World — Listen to a talk on "Frost as a Thinker" by poet Don Paterson.

    • Frost's Landscapes — A photo essay about the rural New England scenery that inspired much of Frost's poetry.

  • LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Frost

    • Acquainted with the Night

    • After Apple-Picking

    • A Roadside Stand

    • Birches

    • Design

    • Dust of Snow

    • Fire and Ice

    • Home Burial

    • Mending Wall

    • Mowing

    • My November Guest

    • Nothing Gold Can Stay

    • Out, Out—

    • Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

    • The Death of the Hired Man

    • The Oven Bird

    • The Road Not Taken

    • The Sound of the Trees

    • The Tuft of Flowers

    • The Wood-Pile

Cite This Page