Home Burial Summary & Analysis
by Robert Frost

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The Full Text of “Home Burial”

1He saw her from the bottom of the stairs

2Before she saw him. She was starting down,

3Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.

4She took a doubtful step and then undid it

5To raise herself and look again. He spoke

6Advancing toward her: ‘What is it you see

7From up there always—for I want to know.’

8She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,

9And her face changed from terrified to dull.

10He said to gain time: ‘What is it you see,’

11Mounting until she cowered under him.

12‘I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.’

13She, in her place, refused him any help

14With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.

15She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see,

16Blind creature; and awhile he didn’t see.

17But at last he murmured, ‘Oh,’ and again, ‘Oh.’

18‘What is it—what?’ she said.

19                                          ‘Just that I see.’

20‘You don’t,’ she challenged. ‘Tell me what it is.’

21‘The wonder is I didn’t see at once.

22I never noticed it from here before.

23I must be wonted to it—that’s the reason.

24The little graveyard where my people are!

25So small the window frames the whole of it.

26Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?

27There are three stones of slate and one of marble,

28Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight

29On the sidehill. We haven’t to mind those.

30But I understand: it is not the stones,

31But the child’s mound—’

32                             ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.

33She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm

34That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;

35And turned on him with such a daunting look,

36He said twice over before he knew himself:

37‘Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?’

38‘Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!

39I must get out of here. I must get air.

40I don’t know rightly whether any man can.’

41‘Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.

42Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs.’

43He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.

44‘There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.’

45‘You don’t know how to ask it.’

46                                              ‘Help me, then.’

47Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

48‘My words are nearly always an offense.

49I don’t know how to speak of anything

50So as to please you. But I might be taught

51I should suppose. I can’t say I see how.

52A man must partly give up being a man

53With women-folk. We could have some arrangement

54By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off

55Anything special you’re a-mind to name.

56Though I don’t like such things ’twixt those that love.

57Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.

58But two that do can’t live together with them.’

59She moved the latch a little. ‘Don’t—don’t go.

60Don’t carry it to someone else this time.

61Tell me about it if it’s something human.

62Let me into your grief. I’m not so much

63Unlike other folks as your standing there

64Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.

65I do think, though, you overdo it a little.

66What was it brought you up to think it the thing

67To take your mother-loss of a first child

68So inconsolably—in the face of love.

69You’d think his memory might be satisfied—’

70‘There you go sneering now!’

71                                           ‘I’m not, I’m not!

72You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.

73God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,

74A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.’

75‘You can’t because you don't know how to speak.

76If you had any feelings, you that dug

77With your own hand—how could you?—his little grave;

78I saw you from that very window there,

79Making the gravel leap and leap in air,

80Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly

81And roll back down the mound beside the hole.

82I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.

83And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs

84To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.

85Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice

86Out in the kitchen, and I don’t know why,

87But I went near to see with my own eyes.

88You could sit there with the stains on your shoes

89Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave

90And talk about your everyday concerns.

91You had stood the spade up against the wall

92Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.’

93‘I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.

94I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.’

95‘I can repeat the very words you were saying:

96“Three foggy mornings and one rainy day

97Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.”

98Think of it, talk like that at such a time!

99What had how long it takes a birch to rot

100To do with what was in the darkened parlor?

101You couldn’t care! The nearest friends can go

102With anyone to death, comes so far short

103They might as well not try to go at all.

104No, from the time when one is sick to death,

105One is alone, and he dies more alone.

106Friends make pretense of following to the grave,

107But before one is in it, their minds are turned

108And making the best of their way back to life

109And living people, and things they understand.

110But the world’s evil. I won’t have grief so

111If I can change it. Oh, I won’t, I won’t!’

112‘There, you have said it all and you feel better.

113You won’t go now. You’re crying. Close the door.

114The heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up.

115Amy! There’s someone coming down the road!’

116You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—

117Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you—’

118‘If—you—do!’ She was opening the door wider.

119‘Where do you mean to go?  First tell me that.

120I’ll follow and bring you back by force.  I will!—’

  • “Home Burial” Introduction

    • "Home Burial," first published in 1914, is one of Robert Frost's longest poems. Written in blank verse, and mostly in dialogue, the poem centers on the peril and pain of miscommunication. The characters, a husband and wife who have recently buried their child, cope with grief very differently and can't understand or respect each other's mourning process. By the poem's conclusion, the title has taken on a double meaning, referring not only to the grave of the couple's dead son but also to the likely death of their love and their marriage.

  • “Home Burial” Summary

    • The man saw his wife at the top of the stairs, from where he was standing down at the foot, before she could see him. She was beginning to descend, but looked back over her shoulder at something that upset her. She took a step down, hesitantly, but then stepped right back up to look again at what she'd been looking at before. Her husband said, while walking up the stairs toward her, "What are you always looking at from the window up there? I want to know." His wife turned toward him and sat down on the steps, her skirt ballooning around her, and her expression shifted from fear to blankness. Her husband repeated himself, stalling for time—"What do you see up there?"—and kept climbing the stairs until he loomed over his wife and she trembled beneath him. "I'm going to take a look myself now," he said, "so you have to tell me what you see, my dear." But she, in return, refused to give him any clues, responding only with icy body language and silence. She let him look at what she'd been looking at, certain he would not see what she saw, the pitiful blind thing; and for a while, he did not. But finally he whispered, "Oh," and then again, "Oh."

      "What? What?" she asked.

      "Well, I get it now."

      "No, you don't," she retorted. "Tell me what's out there."

      "Honestly, it's surprising I didn't understand what you were looking at from the start," he replied. "I never realized until now that you could see it from this spot, here at the top of the stairs. I just must be used to it—that's why. Because there it is, the little graveyard, where all my family is buried! It's so small that this tiny window shows the whole thing. Not much bigger than a bedroom, huh? There are three headstones made of slate, and one made of marble, wide little blocks of stone shining in the sun, over there on the hillside. We don't need to pay attention to those graves. I understand now: it's not the headstones you're looking at, but our child's grave—"

      "Stop, stop, stop, stop," she shouted.

      She pulled away, out from under his arm that was propped over her on the stair rail, rushed down the staircase, and turned to look back at her husband with such an intimidating expression that he said—twice in a row, before he even realized the words had left his mouth—"Can't a man talk about his own dead child?"

      "You can't! Oh, where did I put my hat? Oh, never mind, I don't need it! I have to get out of this house. I need fresh air. Honestly, I don't know if any man can speak about that kind of loss."

      "Amy! Don't seek help or reassurance from somebody else again, instead of me. Hear me out. I refuse to chase after you." He sat down on the stairs and propped his chin resolutely on his hands. "I want to ask you something, dear."

      "You have no idea what the right way is to ask it."

      "So help me," he said.

      Her only response was to reach for the latch on the door.

      "Look, almost everything I say upsets you. I don't know how to talk about our loss in a way that satisfies you. Maybe I could be taught, though honestly I don't understand how. Men have to lose some masculinity in order to be around women. Or we could strike some deal, in which I'd promise not to bring up anything you'd like me to avoid. But I don't like that kind of arrangement, between two people in love. Couples that don't love each other probably can't tolerate one another without those sorts of deals, but a couple that is in love shouldn't need one, in my opinion." She fumbled with the latch on the door. "Don't—don't leave. Don't take your grief to somebody else this time. Talk to me about it, help me to relate, if that's possible. Let me share your sorrow. I'm not as different from other people as you make me seem, standing over there warily. Give me a shot. That said, it does seem to me you're making more fuss than necessary. What in your childhood made you believe this was the right way to grieve, to be so heartbroken over the loss of your first child as to be unreachable, especially when you have a loving husband right here? You would think, by now, that our son had been properly mourned—"

      "Ah, there you go, now you're belittling me!"

      "I'm not, I'm not! You make so angry; I swear I'll come down there after you! God, what a difficult woman you are! Here's where we've ended up, in a situation where a man can't even talk about his own dead child."

      "You can't talk about it because you don't how. You don't have any feelings, you who dug his grave by hand—how could you do it?—his poor little grave. And yet, I watched you from that exact window at the top of the stairs, heedlessly tossing dirt in the air, flinging it every which way, so carelessly that it spilled back into the grave. And I thought to myself, Who is that man? I don't really know him at all. I climbed up and down the stairs, I couldn't look away—and still your shovel kept on digging in that same careless way. And then you came into the house. I heard your loud voice in the kitchen, and I can't explain why I did it, but I crept closer so that I could see you myself. You were able to sit there, with mud-stained shoes from the dirt you'd just dug out of your own baby's grave, and talk about ordinary stuff, day-to-day things. And you just left the shovel lying there, like it was no big deal, propped up against the wall, right over there, in the front hall. I know because I saw it there."

      "I don't know what else to do but laugh. I can't win! I'm cursed! My God, I can't ever win with you."

      "I can literally recite the words you said that day: 'Three foggy mornings plus one rainy day will rot even the strongest birch fence.' Can you believe that? Chatting about rotting fences, on the day of your son's funeral? What on earth did rotting fences have to do with your son's coffin, laid out in the living room for the wake? You didn't care at all! You know, even people's best efforts to comfort the grieving are so insufficient, they might as well not try. Nope, from the moment someone gets sick until the moment they die, they are alone, and in death even more so. Friends pretend to comfort you, to keep close, but before death has even arrived, they're distracted and drawn back to daily life, and living people, and things they know best. But the world is a far darker place than they know. I won't grieve by half-measures, the way most people do, not if I can help it. I refuse!"

      "All right, you've said everything you needed to say, you've gotten it all out of your system, and now you must feel better. You won't leave now, for goodness sake, you're crying. Close the door. You've lost your momentum: no need to keep being so dramatic. Amy! Who's that I see, walking down the road?"

      "You—ugh, you think talking is all there is to it. I have to get out of here—out of this house. There's no way to make you understand—"

      "I swear—if you leave—!" he shouted, even as she opened the door. "Where do you think you're going? You better tell me. I'll chase after you and drag you back if I have to. I swear, I will!—"

  • “Home Burial” Themes

    • Theme The Cost of Miscommunication

      The Cost of Miscommunication

      Language and communication are central to “Home Burial,” which focuses on a couple’s failure to understand each other in the wake of their child’s death. This breakdown in communication—even more than their grief itself—threatens to destroy the couple's marriage, as neither person is able to recognize, let alone empathize with, the other’s pain and perspective. That the couple’s inability to listen to one another ultimately leads to an unresolved shouting match hammers home the poem’s message that communication is vital to the survival and success of any relationship.

      Despite the poem’s extensive use of dialogue, the husband and wife never seem to truly hear each other over the course of the poem. The poem starts out with the husband apparently trying to understand his wife better—"There’s something I should like to ask you, dear”—but the fact that he ignores his wife’s repeated requests to drop the subject indicates he is not really listening.

      In return, his wife rejects her husband’s plea to find a way to talk about their grief, characterizing what he has to say as “sneering” and accusing him of not “know[ing] how to speak.” Crucially, she also implies that she does not believe any words or language can begin to capture the depth of her grief—a mindset that makes any attempt at communication impossible from the start.

      In short, neither spouse is willing to give the other’s perspective full attention or respect. Both are more eager to air their own grievances than hear the other’s out.

      This communication breakdown only heightens the conflict between the two, leading them both to leap to assumptions about the other’s depth of grief. For example, even as he requests that she “give [him his] chance,” the husband accuses his wife of “overdo[ing] it a little” with her “mother-loss," her maternal grief. For her part, the wife excoriates her husband for his behavior on the day of their son’s burial, which she interprets as insufficiently mournful.

      Unsurprisingly, these accusations only fan the flames of the couple’s argument—making communication between the two of them even harder, and creating a cycle of anger and misunderstanding that seems impossible for them to escape. The hints throughout the poem that the wife is taking her grief elsewhere—"Don’t go to someone else this time. / Listen to me,” the husband pleads—only further emphasize that this is an argument the couple has had over and over, without any progress or breakthrough.

      The cost of this miscommunication is devastatingly high. As the poem’s conclusion illustrates, the couple’s marriage is at a breaking point. The wife threatens to leave, and her husband threatens to drag her “back by force.” Tragically and ironically, in the final lines, he shouts, “Where do you mean to go? First tell me that.” He is still trying fruitlessly to talk (or shout) things out, even though his wife has made clear this approach will not work for her.

      Their inability to even communicate about their different communication needs—he’s seeking the right words, while she wishes words were not on the table at all—emphasizes how vital it is to a couple's success that the two partners be able to express themselves to one another. This couple cannot even begin tackle their shared grief over the loss of their child—the pain at the source of their marriage’s rupture—without first learning to listen to and speak with each another.

    • Theme Death and Grief

      Death and Grief

      “Home Burial,” as the title suggests, is a poem concerned with death. The poem revolves around a husband and wife who are coping with the death of their first child very differently, and who wrestle with their seemingly irreconcilable approaches to grief. The poem does not favor one grieving process over the other, but it does capture how the couple’s inability to recognize, respect, or empathize with their partner’s individual response to the tragic loss of their child leads to pain and conflict.

      Throughout the poem, the wife’s approach to grief is depicted as deeply emotional and still quite raw. The poem opens with her standing at a window at the top of the stairs. “What is it you see / From up there always?” her husband asks, only to discover she has been keeping constant watch over their son’s grave. She shuts down his attempts to discuss their shared loss, and seeks again and again to escape the conversation, ultimately condemning her husband for “think[ing] the talk is all.” Her grief, she implies, goes beyond words, and is so profound that she cannot begin to understand those who “mak[e] the best of their way back to life” after a loved one’s death. For the wife, the loss of a child is a blow so great that one can never recover from it.

      The husband takes a much more active approach to grief. He literally buries their child with his own hands, and afterwards is able to “talk about [his] everyday concerns” with funeral goers—much to his wife’s horror. Though he does initially try to understand his wife’s mourning process ("Let me into your grief,” he asks), his ability to move on from this great loss renders him unable to fully empathize with or accept his wife’s slower approach. At one point, he even suggests she is taking “mother-loss of a first child” too hard.

      Unsurprisingly, then, the couple’s conversation escalates over the course of the poem into full-blown argument, as they each criticize and condemn the other's grieving process rather than seeking to understand or empathize with it. "You make me angry […] God, what a woman!” the husband explodes, while his wife sneers that he hasn’t “any feelings” and “couldn’t care” about their son’s death at all. In short, their different ways of mourning are seemingly incompatible.

      Importantly, however, though the poem does not shy away from the couple’s mismatched mourning styles, it presents both approaches to grief as equally valid. The breakdown in the couple’s marriage, therefore, is not the result of one or the other pursuing the “wrong” approach to death and loss, but rather because of both partners’ unwillingness to extend empathy or respect toward the other’s grieving process.

      Fittingly, the poem ends at an impasse, with the wife attempting to leave the house and her husband threatening to “bring [her] back by force.” The poem offers no hope of resolving the pain and conflict between the two of them, lending these final lines an ominous undertone that suggests their marriage is as dead as the child buried in the graveyard.

    • Theme Gender Roles

      Gender Roles

      Gender affects every aspect of the relationship between the two characters in “Home Burial,” as well as their approaches to grief and loss. Written in the early 20th century, the poem invokes traditional, even stereotypical, gender roles, focusing on a dominant, stoic husband and an emotional wife. Crucially, the characters themselves believe in and consistently invoke these same stereotypes, further complicating their struggle to understand one another. Intentionally or not, the poem thus demonstrates some of the dangers of rigid gender stereotypes.

      Gender shapes how the husband and wife approach the poem's central conflict: how to grieve a lost child. The husband relies on dominance and physical force, two stereotypically masculine attributes. For instance, at the poem’s opening, he “mount[s]” the stairs “until [his wife] cower[s] under him” and commands her to tell him why she stares out the window. In contrast, his wife takes what might be called a stereotypically feminine approach. She resists and undermines her husband, weeps, and uses her emotions as weapons.

      The characters justify their behavior by invoking deeply-rooted gender norms. “A man must partly give up being a man / With women-folk,” the husband says in explanation of his difficulty accessing more vulnerable emotions. Similarly, his wife dismisses the notion that men can feel grief the way women do: “I don’t know rightly whether any man can.” Thus, these characters not only act on but deeply trust in stereotypes about men and women, setting them up for misunderstanding and miscommunication from the get-go.

      No surprise, then, that gender norms have also greatly affected the couple’s different approaches to grief. The husband, for instance, sees his wife’s long-lasting response to the loss of their son as “overdo[ing] it a little,” whereas she is appalled at his repressed response, suggesting he does not have “any feelings” at all and indeed “couldn’t care” about their son’s death as much as she does.

      But try as both characters might to pin the blame of their troubled marriage on each other’s gendered faults—“God, what a woman!” the husband exclaims; “Who is that man? I didn’t know you,” the wife laments—the poem on the whole suggests that it is their inability to communicate, not gender differences, that is the true source of their troubles. Both characters’ perspectives receive an equal share of the poem’s attention, and the text does not suggest that one approach to grief is better or worse than the other.

      Rather, it is the couple’s reliance on stereotype—their assumptions about each other—that keeps them in the dark about each other. In other words, gender need not be an obstacle between the two of them—except that this couple lets it be, using gender stereotypes as an excuse for their mistrust and misunderstanding of each other.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Home Burial”

    • Lines 1-7

      He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
      Before she saw him. She was starting down,
      Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
      She took a doubtful step and then undid it
      To raise herself and look again. He spoke
      Advancing toward her: ‘What is it you see
      From up there always—for I want to know.’

      The opening lines of "Home Burial" introduce the poem's dramatic style—and the sad story that style will serve.

      Right away, the reader notices that this poem is written in blank verse, a steady rhythm of iambic pentameter (that is, five da-DUM feet per line) without a regular rhyme scheme. This pattern might feel familiar to readers of Shakespeare, who wrote long passages of his plays in blank verse. Already, readers might almost feel they're watching a play.

      These lines also introduce a third-person speaker, who watches as two characters, a man and a woman, meet on their staircase—and who listens as the man speaks the poem's first line of dialogue. All together, these literary devices make it clear that this will be a narrative poem, a poem that tells a story.

      Lines 1-7 also introduce us to the characters at the center of this story, described here as standing at opposite ends of a flight of stairs. The imagery in this opening section is rich with detail: the speaker reports that the husband spots his wife on the stairs before she notices him, because she is more preoccupied with "looking back over her shoulder at some fear." From the get-go, then, these characters are defined in opposition to one another, both standing and looking in opposite directions.

      But if that symbolism (and the tension of the word "fear") weren't clear enough, these lines also create mood through dialogue. When the husband asks, "'What is it you see / From up there always,'" his words sound less like a question (note that there's no question mark!) and more like a demand, especially given his pushy "I want to know."

      At the same time, this opening remains mysterious. Like the husband, readers don't know what the wife sees "from up there" at the top of the stairs. What they do notice, however, is the wife's inability to look away. In lines 4-5, she "start[s] down" the stairs "doubtful[ly]," only to return to her original spot and "look again," as though drawn back by an invisible force. What's more, the husband's dialogue states that she stands there "always." Clearly, whatever compels her to keep watch at this spot is deeply important to her—but also a mystery to her husband, who must "advance" menacingly up the stairs in order to find out.

    • Lines 8-14

      She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,
      And her face changed from terrified to dull.
      He said to gain time: ‘What is it you see,’
      Mounting until she cowered under him.
      ‘I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.’
      She, in her place, refused him any help
      With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.

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    • Lines 15-20

      She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see,
      Blind creature; and awhile he didn’t see.
      But at last he murmured, ‘Oh,’ and again, ‘Oh.’
      ‘What is it—what?’ she said.
                                                ‘Just that I see.’
      ‘You don’t,’ she challenged. ‘Tell me what it is.’

    • Lines 21-32

      ‘The wonder is I didn’t see at once.
      I never noticed it from here before.
      I must be wonted to it—that’s the reason.
      The little graveyard where my people are!
      So small the window frames the whole of it.
      Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?
      There are three stones of slate and one of marble,
      Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight
      On the sidehill. We haven’t to mind 
      those
      .
      But I understand: it is not the stones,
      But the child’s mound—’
                                   ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.

    • Lines 33-40

      She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm
      That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;
      And turned on him with such a daunting look,
      He said twice over before he knew himself:
      ‘Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?’
      ‘Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!
      I must get out of here. I must get air.
      I don’t know rightly whether any man can.’

    • Lines 41-47

      ‘Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.
      Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs.’
      He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.
      ‘There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.’
      ‘You don’t know how to ask it.’
                                                    ‘Help me, then.’
      Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

    • Lines 48-58

      ‘My words are nearly always an offense.
      I don’t know how to speak of anything
      So as to please you. But I might be taught
      I should suppose. I can’t say I see how.
      A man must partly give up being a man
      With women-folk. We could have some arrangement
      By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off
      Anything special you’re a-mind to name.
      Though I don’t like such things ’twixt those that love.
      Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.
      But two that do can’t live together with them.’

    • Lines 59-69

      She moved the latch a little. ‘Don’t—don’t go.
      Don’t carry it to someone else this time.
      Tell me about it if it’s something human.
      Let me into your grief. I’m not so much
      Unlike other folks as your standing there
      Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
      I do think, though, you overdo it a little.
      What was it brought you up to think it the thing
      To take your mother-loss of a first child
      So inconsolably—in the face of love.
      You’d think his memory might be satisfied—’

    • Lines 70-74

      ‘There you go sneering now!’
                                                 ‘I’m not, I’m not!
      You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.
      God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,
      A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.’

    • Lines 75-84

      ‘You can’t because you don't know how to speak.
      If you had any feelings, you that dug
      With your own hand—how could you?—his little grave;
      I saw you from that very window there,
      Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
      Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
      And roll back down the mound beside the hole.
      I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.
      And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs
      To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.

    • Lines 85-92

      Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice
      Out in the kitchen, and I don’t know why,
      But I went near to see with my own eyes.
      You could sit there with the stains on your shoes
      Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave
      And talk about your everyday concerns.
      You had stood the spade up against the wall
      Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.’

    • Lines 93-101

      ‘I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.
      I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.’
      ‘I can repeat the very words you were saying:
      “Three foggy mornings and one rainy day
      Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.”
      Think of it, talk like that at such a time!
      What had how long it takes a birch to rot
      To do with what was in the darkened parlor?
      You 
      couldn’t
       care!

    • Lines 101-111

      The nearest friends can go
      With anyone to death, comes so far short
      They might as well not try to go at all.
      No, from the time when one is sick to death,
      One is alone, and he dies more alone.
      Friends make pretense of following to the grave,
      But before one is in it, their minds are turned
      And making the best of their way back to life
      And living people, and things they understand.
      But the world’s evil. I won’t have grief so
      If I can change it. Oh, I won’t, I won’t!’

    • Lines 112-117

      ‘There, you have said it all and you feel better.
      You won’t go now. You’re crying. Close the door.
      The heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up.
      Amy! There’s someone coming down the road!’

      You
      —oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—
      Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you—’

    • Lines 118-120

      ‘If—you—do!’ She was opening the door wider.
      ‘Where do you mean to go?  First tell me that.
      I’ll follow and bring you back by force.  I 
      will!
      —’

  • “Home Burial” Symbols

    • Symbol The House

      The House

      The house in which "Home Burial" is set symbolizes the endangered marriage at the poem's heart. The couple live in the same "house," the same relationship, the same grief—but they position themselves very differently within that charged space.

      The poem opens with the couple on opposite ends of a flight of a stairs, an image that establishes their opposite perspectives on grief. The wife literally has a different view than her husband: she is staring out the window that overlooks the graveyard, while her husband must climb the stairs and metaphorically look through her eyes in order to understand what draws her to that spot. He even reveals that he has "never noticed" the view from that window before, whereas his wife cannot keep away from it.

      As the couple's argument develops, their movements around the house—the wife "opening the door wider" and the husband threatening to chase after her—suggest their irresolvable dilemma. The wife can only think of escape; the husband can only respond with violence. The relationship that their house represents just can't contain their different ways of being and grieving.

    • Symbol The Spade

      The Spade

      The spade (or shovel) with which the husband digs the grave symbolizes his approach to grief: concrete, active, and hands-on. By physically digging his son's grave with the spade, putting his hands on the tool that buries his baby, the husband channels his grief into a productive and transformative physical act. This, for him, appears to be an important part of the mourning process, seemingly enabling him to recover from his loss.

      From his wife's perspective, however, this approach to mourning is insufficient and unfathomable: she asks, rhetorically, "How could you?" And when her husband returns to the house and stands "'the spade up against the wall / Outside there in the entry,'" she becomes even more upset. For her, the active grieving symbolized by the spade is an appallingly casual approach to the loss of a child, and it only deepens the division between her and her husband.

  • “Home Burial” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Assonance

      Assonance, often used as an intensifier of language and emotion, is used sparingly throughout "Home Burial," and is more common in the lines spoken by the wife, the more emotional of the pair. For instance, in lines 78-81, assonance helps emphasize the bitter way she criticizes her husband for the way he buried their child:

      I saw you from that very window there,
      Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
      Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
      And roll back down the mound beside the hole.

      The rare end rhyme of "there" and "air" helps show the way the wife has gotten up in the recollection of this moment; she is recounting a memory so familiar that she's slipped into a storytelling cadence. The assonance of the long /ow/ sound in "down" and "mound," a sound that is more painful than plaintive, serves as an important reminder that underneath all this—the wife's rebuke and reproach, her well-worn grievances toward her husband—is a deep well of grief and sorrow.

      Assonance plays this role throughout the poem, serving as an emotional weather vane, emphasizing the feelings that underpin both characters' choice of words as they struggle to express themselves. Long /oh/ sounds in particular are prominent, appearing several times throughout the poem. In line 111, for example, the wife passionately cries, "Oh, I won't, I won't!" Here, she literally cries out with a long, sad "Oh," expressing the sound's grief-stricken qualities to the fullest, before echoing it twice in the word "won't," as she vows to stay true to her unending sorrow.

    • Alliteration

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    • Caesura

    • Dialogue

    • Enjambment

    • Epizeuxis

    • Imagery

    • Consonance

    • Metaphor

    • Rhetorical Question

  • “Home Burial” 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.

    • Pretense
    • Mounting
    • Cowered
    • Wonted
    • Slate
    • Sidehill
    • Mound
    • Daunting
    • Fixed
    • Bind
    • A-mind
    • ‘Twixt
    • Inconsolably
    • Sneering
    • Spade
    • ‘what was in the darkened parlor’
    Pretense
    • A false show, a make-believe.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Home Burial”

    • Form

      "Home Burial" is a narrative poem that tells the story of a couple grieving the death of their son. Unusually for a work of poetry, it is made up almost entirely of dialogue between the husband and wife.

      This dialogue shapes the poem's 21 irregular stanzas, which, as the poem develops, begin to go on as for as long as the characters speak. For example, their back-and-forth in lines 18-20 forms three brief, one-line stanzas:

      ‘What is it—what?’ she said.

      ‘Just that I see.’

      ‘You don’t,’ she challenged. ‘Tell me what it is.’

      On the other hand, the poem's longest stanza—one of the husband's monologues—runs for 21 whole lines (48-69). The reader might at first notice that the husband speaks in much longer stanzas than the wife, suggesting the difference between their approaches to grief (and each other): while he lectures and pries, she stonewalls and evades.

      But as the argument builds and the wife gets angrier, she makes her own long speeches at lines 75-92 and 95-111, when she remembers the day her husband buried their son. Then, the end of the poem returns to quick, sharp back-and-forth between the pair in lines 112-120.

      The poem's movement between longer, more immersive stanzas and lightning-quick exchanges mirrors the movement of the argument—from the initial provocation to the detailed hashing-out to the final breakdown of communication.

    • Meter

      "Home Burial" is written in blank verse, a poetic form that doesn't rhyme but follows a strict meter. In this case, as in most examples of blank verse, that meter is iambic pentameter. While the characters of the poem speak in ordinary voices, this meter lends their words some gravitas and some drama: iambic pentameter, famously, is the meter in which Shakespeare wrote his plays. This is a major moment in this couple's shared life, and the stately meter reflects the seriousness of their conversation.

      Iambic pentameter is a meter with five iambs—poetic feet with a da-DUM rhythm—per line. For the most part, "Home Burial" sticks closely to this rhythm—an impressive feat considering that these characters don't talk like poets, but like everyday folks. Look at how steady the iambic pentameter is in the passage of perfectly natural (if old-fashioned) dialogue at lines 21-24:

      The won- | der is | I did- | n’t see | at once.
      I ne- | ver no- | ticed it | from here | before.
      I must | be won- | ted to | itthat’s | the reason.
      The lit- | tle grave- | yard where | my peo- | ple are!

      When the poem does break from iambic pentameter, the surprising change often highlights tense or tragic moments in the couple's conversation. For example, take lines 31-32, which can be thought of as a single 10-syllable line, broken into two halves:

      '[...] But the child’s mound—’

      ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.

      Here, both words in "child's mound" are stressed, making this poetic foot a spondee rather than an iamb. This makes sense: it's the poem's first explicit mention of the dead child's grave, and the heavy weight of those two stresses evokes this moment's seriousness.

      The wife's outburst—"'Don't, don't, don't, don't'"—also makes a dramatic break from iambic pentameter. Those four heavy stresses hammer home her fierce resistance to the conversation that's about to unfold.

      Mostly, though, the poem sticks to steady iambic pentameter, saving its metrical fireworks for moments of violent emotion. The intersection between the formal drama of blank verse and the everyday language of the couple suggests the significance of even the most normal lives.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      Since it's written in blank verse, "Home Burial" doesn't use a regular rhyme scheme. Blank verse suits the poem's shape and tone: the vast majority of the poem is in naturalistic dialogue, and most people's conversations don't rhyme. But there are a few small moments of end rhyme, such as in lines 78-79, when the wife describes how she watched her husband burying their son:

      I saw you from that very window there,
      Making the gravel leap and leap in air,

      This little moment of rhyme, a surprise in the pattern of blank verse the reader has gotten accustomed to, suggests the intensity of the wife's experience. As she describes her husband energetically digging their baby's grave, her rhyme makes her seem almost entranced by the horror of the memory, as if she's seeing it all unfold before her again.

  • “Home Burial” Speaker

    • "Home Burial" is mostly a dialogue between a wife, Amy, and her husband, whose name the reader never learns. But there's really another speaker: the third-person watcher who introduces these characters. This speaker plays the role of a narrator, describing the distraught couple and letting readers spy on their conversation.

      This speaker pays close attention to the couple's body language and tones of voice, noticing their "murmur[s]," "challenge[s]," and "crie[s]," and the way they move up and down the stairs, advancing and retreating like two armies in battle.

      The speaker also occasionally provides some insight into a character's thoughts and feelings. For instance, in line 15, they describe the wife as "sure that [her husband] wouldn't see, / blind creature," giving readers a glimpse of the despair and contempt Amy feels over her husband's cluelessness.

      As the couple's conversation gets more and more heated, the speaker gets quieter. Dialogue starts to flow into dialogue, without even a "he said" or "she said" from the speaker. By the poem's conclusion, the speaker has been silent for over 70 lines. This heightens the drama of the poem by more deeply immersing readers in the couple's conflict. It's as if the watching speaker, like the readers, has gotten sucked into the drama of the argument, and is now just listening, fascinated. Here, the speaker seems less like an omniscient narrator, and more like just another onlooker, caught up in the moment.

  • “Home Burial” Setting

    • "Home Burial" is set in a married couple's home—and the family home of the husband, who grew up in that very house. The family graveyard is located on the property, a fact that lays the foundation for the entire poem.

      The poem unfolds rather like a play, and the action all takes place on a staircase, where a window overlooks the grave of the couple's dead son. The speaker carefully tracks the couple's movements as their argument takes them up and down these stairs: the pair move like battling armies, advancing and retreating.

      The rest of the house plays a role here, too, even if it doesn't show up "onstage." For instance, the wife's contempt for her husband's grief (or lack thereof) takes root in a scene she witnessed from “the kitchen," when the sight of her husband casually leaning the shovel he used to dig their baby's grave in the "entry" struck her with horror. Worse still is the living room where the child's coffin once lay—the thought of which so haunts the wife that she can only refer indirectly to "what was in the darkened parlor." The house comes to feel like a claustrophobic world of grief: every room contains another terrible memory.

      More broadly, readers can assume the poem is set around the time when it was written—the early 20th century—or perhaps even a little earlier, considering the description of the wife's "skirts" and the characters' old-fashioned voices. There are also plenty of hints that the poem takes place in New England—a frequent setting in Robert Frost's work, and the sort of place where a rural home, a family cemetery, rotting birch fences, and foggy mornings are commonplace.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “Home Burial”

      Literary Context

      Robert Frost became one of the most celebrated American poets of his lifetime and remains renowned to this day. Born in 1874 and raised in New England, Frost began his poetic career in earnest when he traveled to England as a young man. There he rubbed shoulders with modernist poets like Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, and Ezra Pound. Pound in particular became an important advocate of Frost's work and helped establish his literary reputation.

      After publishing two poetry collections while living abroad (including the well-received North of Boston, in which "Home Burial" was first published in 1914), Frost returned to New England, a landscape that inspired his work throughout his life. Between 1920 and 1970, he published 24 volumes of poetry. Frost's poetry was formally traditional but thematically innovative and invested in the lives of ordinary people.

      Frost drew from his own background as a farmer, a resident of rural New England, and, in the case of "Home Burial," a father who lost several children. His poems are notable for their psychological complexity, irony, and ambiguity, as well as their persistent interest in plumbing the depths of the human experience, without shying away from dark or difficult themes.

      Over the course of his career, Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes (an achievement unmatched by any other American poet), a Congressional Gold Medal, and the poet laureateship of Vermont. He also delivered a poem at President John F. Kennedy's inauguration, who lauded Frost for having "bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."

      Historical Context

      Robert Frost's life and career spanned some of the most dynamic decades of American history. Frost lived through both World Wars, the Great Depression, and a revolution in social norms, including the rise of the civil rights movement.

      When "Home Burial" was written in 1914, however, Frost was still at the beginning of his poetic career, and Europe was just descending into the horrors of World War I. While America didn't enter the war until 1917, Frost, who lived in England for a time, would have been well aware of the mass death and misery on the horizon. Not long after "Home Burial" was written, grief over the loss of a young son would become an all-too-common experience.

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