The Hillside Thaw by Robert Frost poem summary, American Literature II, 3rd Year 5th Semester, B.A English Literature

  BA English Literature

[3rd Year, 5th Semester]

American Literature – II 

Unit 1: Poetry 

“A Hillside Thaw” by Robert Frost

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About Poet:

Robert Frost (Robert Lee Frost) was an American Poet noted for his realistic descriptions of rural life. Born on 26th March 1874, he spent his 40 year as an unknown entity.

He received four Pulitzer prizes for poetry in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943 and was a special guest at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. Frost became a poetic force and the unofficial Poet Laureate of the US. Died on 29th January 1968.

Frost's love of Nature is mainly directed to the local or regional plane. He expresses nature in terms of mountains, hills and valleys, the streams, the plants and flowers, the birds and the animals, even the insects and hornets of New England. Nature therefore gives him some facts on which his imagination could work.

Some of his famous works are The Road Not Taken, West Running Brook, Mending Wall, Birches, After Apple Picking and Home Burial.

About Poem:

“The Hillside Thaw" was first published in the April 6, 1921, issue of the New Republic and was later collected in New Hampshire.

New Hampshire is a 1923 volume of poems which won the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The book included several of Frost's most well-known poems, including "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and "Fire and Ice“.

Poem:

To think to know the country and now know

The hillside on the day the sun lets go

Ten million silver lizards out of snow!

As often as I've seen it done before

I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.

It looks as if some magic of the sun

Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor

And the light breaking on them made them run.

But if I though to stop the wet stampede,

And caught one silver lizard by the tail,

And put my foot on one without avail,

And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneed

In front of twenty others' wriggling speed,-

In the confusion of them all aglitter,

And birds that joined in the excited fun

By doubling and redoubling song and twitter,

I have no doubt I'd end by holding none.

It takes the moon for this. The sun's a wizard

By all I tell; but so's the moon a witch.

From the high west she makes a gentle cast

And suddenly, without a jerk or twitch,

She has her speel on every single lizard.

I fancied when I looked at six o'clock

The swarm still ran and scuttled just as fast.

The moon was waiting for her chill effect.

I looked at nine: the swarm was turned to rock

In every lifelike posture of the swarm,

Transfixed on mountain slopes almost erect.

Across each other and side by side they lay.

The spell that so could hold them as they were

Was wrought through trees without a breath of storm

To make a leaf, if there had been one, stir.

It was the moon's: She held them until day.

One lizard at the end of every ray.

The thought of my attempting such a stay!

Summary:

"A Hillside Thaw," a poem which Frost once referred as "Silver Lizards," in a letter to Sidney Cox develops an extended metaphor from an image that Frost and his friend Raymond Holden once observed on his farm in Franconia, New Hampshire. Holden recalled, "We stood for a while in the moonlight, watching the glitter of the frozen rivulets which, in the warm sun of the afternoon before, had been runnels of thaw-water, running down the sloping floor of the sugar orchard".

The poem begins, "To think to know the country and not know /The hillside on the day the sun lets go," and this statement reveals the subject and attitude of the poem. The narrator chides those who think they know the country but have not witnessed a hillside thaw, because to him that is the country. 

When the sun comes out it unleashes ten million lizards on a hillside. That the sun caused snow to melt, which in turns makes small rivets of water that resembled lizards. The narrator describes how this must be the work of the sun because the sun is a wizard, but then says the moon is a witch and by nightfall when the sun sets and the moon comes up, the water freezes and the lizards stop moving and turn to rock. 

The poem is filled with detailed imagery, beginning with the "ten million silver lizards out of the snow," the trails of water that trickle down from thawing snow on a hilltop. As the water slithers down the hillside, it looks as if silver lizards are coming out from under a rug. The narrator cannot imagine how "it's done," this illusion, except by "some magic of the sun."

Frost expands the image, describing it as a "wet stampede" and imagining catching a "lizard by the tail" or trying to stop one with his foot. He knows that even if he were to throw himself on the ground in "front of twenty others' wriggling speed," he would still "end by holding none," since lizards made of water cannot be grasped.

The closing stanza describes the sun as a wizard and the moon as a witch. The sun's wizardry has turned melting snow into lizards before the speaker's eyes, and the moon's witchcraft manages to turn them into "rock" when the sun sets and the temperature drops below freezing again.

This poem demonstrates how the human imagination works in the face of natural occurrences. Frost's poetic description of the hillside thaw skillfully extends one of his most unusual metaphors.

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