Acquainted With The Night

Michael Midence
“Acquainted with the Night”: Robert Frost on Darkness In Robert Frost's poem "Acquainted with the Night" Frost has left this poem up for many interpretations. The poem begins “I have been one acquainted with the night,” it means, basically, that he has met, or has some knowledge of, the night. It is a neutral way to say something. You'd say you were acquainted with someone if you had met them, but weren't friends with them. We can read that maybe the individual is restless and has something on his or her mind. While the speaker of "Acquainted with the Night" is acquainted with the night, his surroundings are all very distant, and, in the poem, he has no friends or family.
Since this poem can be interpreted many ways I will follow the text as a guideline. The total amount of lines present in this poem is fourteen, which makes this a sonnet. "Acquainted with the Night" uses many metaphors, however in a literal sense is a simple story to follow. The speaker tends to use simple words with complex metaphors. The rhyme scheme of “Acquainted with the Night” goes as follows:
The first stanza is ABA, the second is BCB, the third is CDC, and the last stanza's two lines are in a DD rhyme scheme. Frost also writes this poem in near perfect iambic pentameter. This means that each line has 10 syllables, which are arranged so that one unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable.
The objective dark setting of this poem helps understand with an even darker theme. This poem is set at night with darkness being lit up by a full moon. Darkness is indicated by the absence of sight. In this sonnet Frost suggests that he may possibly be suffering from a change in mental status. Whether he was depressed or on the border of insanity is up to you. The poet throughout all stanzas of this poem transcends the different levels and degrees of darkness he or she has been through. As a reader you begin to feel the pain of the poet upon reading "Acquainted with the Night.”
In line two the speaker reveals that he or she "walked out in rain--- and back in.” This refers to the everyday reasoning that Frost experienced regular moments of pain throughout his life. The depressed individual can relate to the natural onset and lessening of pain as Frost describes. When the speaker out walks the “city light”, it's another metaphor for depression. Yet this line takes it farther: not only is the speaker depressed, when he gets far enough into his depression, there is no light, or happiness, in his life, at least not from cities and civilization. The speaker has seen down the “saddest city lane,” The street is not only sad, but it's the saddest. This is similar to how the city light was not only far, but the furthest. The speaker wants to let us know that the kinds of nights he's writing about are not just your average dark and lonely nights, but the darkest, the loneliest.
As the speaker passes by the watchman, “And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.” The speaker looks down, avoiding the glance of the watchman, because he doesn't want to explain something. We're not told what he's unwilling to explain. Maybe he's doing something that he shouldn't be doing, or maybe he is just so trapped in his own loneliness that he doesn't want to have to face another person.
Suddenly, though, in the essential third stanza, the speaker stops and hears a cry far away:

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet--

When far away an interrupted cry-- Came over houses from another street,--
He's stopped to listen to a voice calling out from another street, falsely hoping that it was calling for him.
Someone is yelling something, but the speaker can't quite make it out, it's interrupted. The city seems big and disconnected here. The streets are far away, noises have to travel over lots of houses to make it anywhere, and once they've made it, they don't even sound right anymore. The cry from the third stanza was in the fourth stanza “not to call me back,” Now we find out why the speaker was so interested in this interrupted cry, other than that it's a dark, creepy sound on a dark, creepy night. The cry was not for him, though he wished it was, calling him back from wherever he came from, or yelling a forgotten goodbye. The speaker then looks up to the sky and interprets it as an “unearthly height”. We get the sense of being really far away and
lonely. Finally, in the last line of the fourth stanza going into the fifth and final stanza when he says "One luminary clock against the sky,” "Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right." "I have been one acquainted with the night" While this clock at an unearthly height is a little spooky, it's also beautiful, and gives us light beyond the farthest city lights. The moon is distant and dreamlike. The speaker feels like, no matter what time it is, it's neither wrong nor right. He's acquainted with the night, so he's used to this dark, creepy loneliness, but he doesn't like it very much. In last line, speaker cuts the poem short here, breaking from the rhyme scheme. This line is repeated from both the title and the first line of the poem. It wraps up this very tight poem with its sound and meaning. Like most sonnets this is the conclusion after the first eight lines. The sudden change in attitude can leave the reader confused. I can continue to relate to this poem, recalling back moments of darkness. That without lasting these events occurring in my life, I may have not become what I have wanted to become. Even so we all lay below one luminary clock where nothing happens by chance and it is neither right nor wrong. This poem further reinforces my idea that most depression comes through being selfish. It is very important to stop and listen to the far away cries and remember that we all sleep under the same sky.