Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE SUBVERTED FLOWER, by ROBERT FROST Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: She drew back; he was calm: Last Line: And drew her backward home Subject(s): Man-woman Relationships; Flowers; Male-female Relations | ||||||||
She drew back; he was calm: "It is this that had the power." And he lashed his open palm With the tender-headed flower. He smiled for her to smile, But she was either blind Or willfully unkind. He eyed her for a while For a woman and a puzzle. He flicked and flung the flower, And another sort of smile Caught up like fingertips The corners of his lips And cracked his ragged muzzle. She was standing to the waist In golden rod and brake, Her shining hair displaced. He stretched her either arm As if she made it ache To clasp her - not to harm; As if he could not spare To touch her neck and hair. "If this has come to us And not to me alone -" So she thought she heard him say; Though with every word he spoke His lips were sucked and blown And the effort made him choke Like a tiger at a bone. She had to lean away. She dared not stir a foot, Lest movement should provoke The demon of pursuit That slumbers in a brute. It was then her mother's call From inside the garden wall Made her steal a look of fear To see if he could hear And would pounce to end it all Before her mother came. She looked and saw the shame: A hand hung like a paw, An arm worked like a saw As if to be persuasive, An ingratiating laugh That cut the snout in half, And eye become evasive. A girl could only see That a flower had marred a man, But what she could not see Was that the flower might be Other than base and fetid: That the flower had done but part, And what the flower began Her own too meager heart Had terribly completed. She looked and saw the worst. And the dog or what it was, Obeying bestial laws, A coward save at night, Turned from the place and ran. She heard him stumble first And use his hands in flight. She heard him bark outright. And oh, for one so young The bitter words she spit Like some tenacious bit That will not leave the tongue. She plucked her lips for it, And still the horror clung. Her mother wiped the foam From her chin, picked up her comb, And drew her backward home. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MISERY AND SPLENDOR by ROBERT HASS THE APPLE TREES AT OLEMA by ROBERT HASS DOUBLE SONNET by ANTHONY HECHT CONDITIONS XXI by ESSEX HEMPHILL CALIFORNIA SORROW: MOUNTAIN VIEW by MARY KINZIE SUPERBIA: A TRIUMPH WITH NO TRAIN by MARY KINZIE COUNSEL TO UNREASON by LEONIE ADAMS TWENTY QUESTIONS by DAVID LEHMAN |
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