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The Sound of the Trees Summary & Analysis
by Robert Frost

The Sound of the Trees Summary & Analysis
by Robert Frost

  • Intro
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line
    Explanations
  • Symbols
  • Poetic
    Devices
  • Vocabulary &
    References
  • Form, Meter, &
    Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
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The Full Text of “The Sound of the Trees”

1I wonder about the trees.

2Why do we wish to bear

3Forever the noise of these

4More than another noise

5So close to our dwelling place?

6We suffer them by the day

7Till we lose all measure of pace,

8And fixity in our joys,

9And acquire a listening air.

10They are that that talks of going

11But never gets away;

12And that talks no less for knowing,

13As it grows wiser and older,

14That now it means to stay.

15My feet tug at the floor

16And my head sways to my shoulder

17Sometimes when I watch trees sway,

18From the window or the door.

19I shall set forth for somewhere,

20I shall make the reckless choice

21Some day when they are in voice

22And tossing so as to scare

23The white clouds over them on.

24I shall have less to say,

25But I shall be gone.

  • “The Sound of the Trees” Introduction

    • "The Sound of the Trees" is poem by Robert Frost that first appeared in his third collection, Mountain Interval (1916). The poem explores the tension between longing and action, illustrated by the image of trees swaying in the wind even as they remain firmly planted in the ground. The speaker takes offense to the sound of the trees' rustling leaves, describing this "noise" as the trees' hypocritical chatter about getting away despite knowing full well that they're going to stay put. Through these personified trees, the poem explores the conflict between people's desire to set off and make new lives for themselves and their inability (or refusal) to actually leave their familiar worlds behind.

  • “The Sound of the Trees” Summary

    • I have some questions about the trees. Why do we prefer their constant noise over any other sounds so close to where we live? We put up with their noise daily until we lose all sense of time and certainty in our own happiness, and become mesmerized by listening.

      Trees are the kind of things that talk about leaving but never actually go anywhere. They don't talk any less despite knowing full well, especially as they get wiser and older, that they will stay where they are.

      Sometimes my own feet feel rooted to the floor and my head starts to sway as I watch the trees shift in the breeze, looking out from the window or door of my house.

      I will go somewhere. I will make that irresponsible decision one day when the trees are all talking and blowing in the wind as if trying to scare away the white clouds that pass overhead. On that day, I'll won't talk as much as the trees do, but I'll be gone.

  • “The Sound of the Trees” Themes

    • Theme Life, Longing, and Acceptance

      Life, Longing, and Acceptance

      “The Sound of Trees” presents a speaker caught between two paths in life: packing up and leaving to start anew somewhere else, or accepting things as they are. The speaker projects this dilemma onto nearby trees, feeling that their sound—the restless noise of their rustling leaves—suggests they want to “get[] away” even as their roots keep them firmly in place. In personifying the trees, the speaker explores the conflicting emotions people feel when torn between staying put and the intense longing to leave—between the familiar tug of life as it is, and the pull of life as it could be.

      At the same time, the poem suggests that people tend to stick with the lives they have instead of making the "reckless choice" to "set forth for somewhere" new. This might be because people feel tethered to one place by a sense of duty to those around them, or because it's just easier to accept one's lot than it is to risk everything to "get away."

      The sound of the wind moving through the firmly planted trees mirrors the speaker’s own internal debate over whether to stay grounded or to “uproot” everything and start a new life elsewhere. Like a tree with its roots, the speaker feels their feet “tug at the floor.” The poem implies that the speaker is tempted to stay rooted to the spot (that is, to remain a part of their current community) because doing so is the safer option.

      Perhaps this speaker feels a sense of duty toward their current community, or simply fears leaving the comfort of familiarity behind. But the speaker also has a strong desire to “make the reckless choice” and "be gone." Thus even as the speaker’s feet seem rooted, a sense of duty or mere habit keeping them in place, their “head sways” while watching the trees: their thoughts pull them toward freedom and change.

      Despite the insistence that the speaker “shall set forth” one day, however, the speaker’s potential destination is described only as “somewhere.” The speaker doesn’t have a concrete plan for the future, itself—just an ill-defined longing to see what else is out there, to experience more than life as they currently live it. If the speaker were to leave, such a decision would put an end to all this talk of leaving (“I shall have less to say”). But the poem is just that—talk—and it seems unlikely that the day of departure, also vaguely defined as “some day,” will ever come. This connects with the idea that trees, though they may sway towards new horizons, are incapable of actually getting away.

      The poem thus suggests that people often live their lives caught between the desire to act and the inability to do so. Like the wind blowing through the leaves, possible alternative futures drift through people’s minds—but, most of the time, they stay firmly planted in the life they already have.

      The poem implies that the tension between settling for life as it comes or taking a risk by trying to begin again from scratch is part of human nature. But generally speaking, the poem suggests, people are more likely to live within this tension—and talk about the possibility of leaving—than they are to take action.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Sound of the Trees”

    • Lines 1-5

      I wonder about the trees.
      Why do we wish to bear
      Forever the noise of these
      More than another noise
      So close to our dwelling place?

      The poem starts with an expression of doubt and, perhaps, curiosity. The speaker "wonder[s]" about the trees—that is, the speaker has some thoughts or questions about them.

      The speaker then poses a rhetorical question: "why do we" put up with—even desire—the "noise" made by trees? Why is it that human beings prefer that noise (by which the speaker presumably means the rustling of the leaves in the wind) over any other noise? More specifically, the speaker wonders why people plant trees near where they live (or live near where there are trees).

      It's a strange question, one that suggests that the sound of the trees is something people suffer ("bear") rather than enjoy. The speaker's gripe with the sound of the trees isn't yet clear, but it's obvious enough there is one!

      Note how the opening five lines depict this "noise" through sound. The mixture of /w/ alliteration and sibilance, for example, suggests the sound of rustling leaves, or of air whooshing through the trees in question:

      I wonder about the trees.
      Why do we wish to bear
      Forever the noise of these
      More than another noise
      So close to our dwelling place?

      There's a subtle end rhyme created through "trees" in line 1 and "these" in line 2 that creates a feeling of melody and momentum. That sense of melody, in turn, boosted by the assonance of long /oh/ sounds of "So close" (which also draws attention to just how "close" people tend to live to these). The diacope of "noise" (repeated in lines 3 and 4) also calls attention to the fact that this particular noise is special; people prefer the rustling trees to, say, the hum of cars on a highway.

      And, finally, the intense enjambment from lines 1-5 pulls readers down the page until the firm end-stop after "place." This movement, in turn, evokes the movement of the trees' branches themselves.

    • Lines 6-9

      We suffer them by the day
      Till we lose all measure of pace,
      And fixity in our joys,
      And acquire a listening air.

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    • Lines 10-14

      They are that that talks of going
      But never gets away;
      And that talks no less for knowing,
      As it grows wiser and older,
      That now it means to stay.

    • Lines 15-18

      My feet tug at the floor
      And my head sways to my shoulder
      Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
      From the window or the door.

    • Lines 19-20

      I shall set forth for somewhere,
      I shall make the reckless choice

    • Lines 21-23

      Some day when they are in voice
      And tossing so as to scare
      The white clouds over them on.

    • Lines 24-25

      I shall have less to say,
      But I shall be gone.

  • “The Sound of the Trees” Symbols

    • Symbol The Window and Door

      The Window and Door

      The window and door to the speaker's home symbolize the choice between accepting life as it is and setting "forth" to start over elsewhere. These objects create a literal boundary in the poem that represents the symbolic boundary between staying and leaving.

      Note how the speaker looks at the trees "From the window or the door," which implies that the speaker is still firmly inside a house when observing the world beyond. Even as the speaker's "head sways" in a motion that suggests the desire to leave, the speaker remains firmly in place, feet "tug[g]ing at the floor" of this home. Actually stepping through this door (or climbing through the window) would represent the speaker leaving their current life behind. The fact that the speaker remains on one side of these objects by the poem's ends indicates that, for all their talk of leaving, the speaker remains right where they started.

    • Symbol The Clouds

      The Clouds

      Towards the end of the poem, the speaker envisions the trees moving so violently in the wind that it looks as though they're trying to frighten away the "white clouds" that pass overhead. These clouds symbolize movement and change.

      Whereas the trees talk of leaving but never take any action, the clouds, by their very nature, are constantly in motion. Perhaps, then, the trees want to "scare" off the clouds because they don't want reminders of the world beyond their own little plot of land; maybe the sight of the passing clouds reminds the trees of everything they can't have. Whereas the trees are stuck in place, the clouds can freely fly all over the world. In this reading, then, the clouds symbolize not just movement and change but also a life unencumbered by duty, responsibility, or roots.

    • Symbol The Trees

      The Trees

      The personified trees represent human beings themselves, and more specifically those who talk of leaving their current situations but never follow through. The trees' "noise," which represents the longing to "get[] away," seems to irk the speaker because it's just that: noise, all "talk" and no action. The trees keep on talking even as they get "wiser and older," which reflects the way that that people keep dreaming of starting over even as they get old enough to know better.

      The trees' roots, meanwhile, represent the ties that bind people to their circumstances—things like family, community, jobs, history, and so forth. Despite people's intense longing to see what other possibilities are out there, their roots keep them tethered to the world they know.

  • “The Sound of the Trees” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Alliteration

      The speaker uses alliteration sparingly to dramatize images and ideas, or to simply suggest noise. In line 2, for example, alliteration raises the poetic volume to match the focus on the noise made by trees. The /w/ sounds here suggest the whoosh of air that would move through the trees and make their leaves rustle:

      I wonder about the trees.
      Why do we wish to bear

      Later, alliteration helps to highlight to conflict between action and inaction. In line 15, the speaker says, "my feet tug at the floor"; the two /f/ sounds link these words, and in doing so suggest that the speaker's feet are inseparable from the floor (like a tree and its roots). Rooted to the floor in this way, the speaker feels unable to actually go anywhere.

      In another striking moment, the speaker comically depicts trees as trying to scare clouds away: "tossing so as to scare / The white clouds." The /t/, hard /c/, and /s/ sounds here are the equivalent of the poem jumping out at the reader from a hiding place, mirroring this apparent attempt by the trees to seem terrifying to the clouds up above.

    • Sibilance

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    • End-Stopped Line

    • Enjambment

    • Personification

    • Repetition

    • Rhetorical Question

  • “The Sound of the Trees” 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.

    • Bear
    • Dwelling place
    • Measure of pace
    • Fixity
    • Air
    Bear

    • Tolerate.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Sound of the Trees”

    • Form

      "The Sound of the Trees" is 25 lines long and appears on the page as a single block of text. It doesn't conform to any established poetic form, but is fairly typical of Frost's poems of this period. In a sense, the looseness of the form matches with the poem's opening statement: "I wonder about the trees." The speaker is in the process of thinking about something, rather than presenting a carefully scripted set of ideas.

      The single block of text also subtly reflects the poem's subject. Trees are taller than they are wide, and the shape of the poem on the page thus recalls the trunk of a tree. The form also makes the poem feel heavier (imagine how different it would be if there were stanza breaks between every couple of lines). This, in turn, ties in with the poem's focus on being stuck—or rooted—to one place or way of life.

    • Meter

      "The Sound of the Trees" uses what is best described as loose iambic trimeter. Frost actually coined the term "loose iambics" in part to describe the kind of meter at work in this poem. This meter keeps things feeling conversational, as though readers are getting a look at the speaker's free-flowing thoughts.

      Pure iambic trimeter means each line has three iambs, feet with an unstressed-stressed syllable pattern (da-DUM). There are plenty of lines like that in the poem. Take line 11:

      But nev- | er gets | away;

      Or line 14:

      That now | it means | to stay.

      Again, though, the meter is very loose. There are lots of variations in the amount of syllables in the line, but that the amount of stresses tends to stay the same. Take line 7, for example:

      Till we lose | all meas- | ure of pace,

      This line uses an anapest, an iamb, and then another anapest (anapests are feet with three syllables that go da-da-DUM). In this line, the anapests perform the "loss" of "pace" (urgency) that the speaker says people suffer because of the noise of the trees. The meter quite literally changes the "measure" of the poem's own pace.

      Generally speaking, that's the kind of effect achieved by the loose meter. It generates tension between stability and freedom.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      "The Sound of the Trees" doesn't have a regular rhyme scheme, but it does use plenty of rhyme. Initially, this goes:

      ABACDEDCB

      As readers can see from just these few lines, there are many end rhymes in the poem—it's just that there's no real pattern to them. This gives the poem the sense of being caught between two possible worlds: rhyme and non-rhyme. This is no accident; it represents the speaker's own dilemma, between staying put and accepting life as it is or leaving to starting a new one "somewhere" else, between structure and freedom.

  • “The Sound of the Trees” Speaker

    • Though it uses a first-person perspective throughout, the poem doesn't give much away about its speaker. Perhaps there is an element of autobiography in the poem, with Frost himself reflecting on his various life choices.

      What is definitely clear is that the speaker feels in someway dissatisfied with their current life. It is really the speaker—not any tree—who is torn between accepting things as they are and escaping to start over again. The speaker projects this feeling onto the sound of the trees, hearing in their rustling leaves a familiar and frustrating restlessness.

      The reader is none the wiser at the end of the poem whether the speaker really means it when saying in line 19 "I shall set forth for somewhere." The speaker has an ill-defined longing to get away, but it's not clear whether the speaker has the conviction to follow through on it.

  • “The Sound of the Trees” Setting

    • The poem seems to take place in the speaker's home (their "dwelling place"), which is situated nearby trees that rustle in the wind. The speaker observes these trees from inside, looking through a "window" or "door" that takes on symbolic meaning. These objects can be thought of as representing the boundary between the speaker's options: staying put or leaving. Beyond this, the setting remains vague, which is part of the point. Keeping things vague means the poem's message of restless longing can resonate with people in all different circumstances.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “The Sound of the Trees”

      Literary Context

      "The Sound of the Trees" appears in Robert Frost's third collection of poetry, Mountain Interval. First published in 1916, this collection features what would go on to become some of Frost's best-known poems, including "The Road Not Taken," "Out, Out—," and "Birches."

      Frost's poetry is often associated with rural life in New England, and the poet spent many of his early years working on a farm. Though the poem doesn't refer directly to New England, the presence of the trees does suggest a rural setting. Its focus on the natural world is also typical of Frost, who's often described as a kind of nature poet in the vein of 18th-century Romantics.

      Unlike the Romantics, however, who celebrated the beauty and wisdom of nature, Frost often treats the natural world as a complex and ambiguous force. Here, the speaker presents the trees as rather obnoxious, and they act more as a backdrop onto which the speaker's own psychological troubles are projected.

      This is also a poem about choices. The speaker stands on a kind of crossroads, wondering whether to stay put and accept life as it is, or simply "set forth for somewhere" and start anew. The difficulty of such choices—of not knowing the right path through life—is a common theme in Frost's poetry, with "The Road Not Taken" representing the most famous example.

      Frost wrote during a literary period known as Modernism, which saw many poets shifting away from more traditional poetic forms and experimenting with language, form, and meter. Frost's accessible, colloquial language and focus on the ordinary concerns of everyday people fits right in with Modernism, though he still used meter in many of his poems and said that he was more focused on content than formal innovation. He even famously compared free verse poetry to playing tennis without a net.

      In a way, this poem itself subtly reflects that tension between the comforting but restrictive confines of the past and the exciting but destabilizing possibilities of the future.

      Historical Context

      This poem was published during the First World War, one of the most deadly and destructive conflicts in human history. The early 20th century in general was also a time of immense technological change, including the introduction of mechanized weaponry that made armed conflict more deadly than ever before. Modernism was in large part a reaction to all this, as artists sought to create works that better reflected their rapidly shifting world.

      That said, not much of this outside context finds its way into Frost's poetry (a fact for which he has sometimes been criticized). Readers are more likely to find a horse than an automobile in a Frost poem!

      Frost spent a great deal of time living on a farm in New Hampshire, a state renowned for its natural beauty. In fact, New Hampshire is the second most forested state in the country—which might explain the speaker's fixation on trees in the poem!

  • More “The Sound of the Trees” Resources

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