Acquainted with the Night BY ROBERT FROST

Poem 
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

Theme:

Acquainted with the Night Theme of Isolation. While the speaker of "Acquainted with the Night" is alone with the night, his surroundings are all very distant, and, in the poem, he has no friends or family. He avoids the watchman, who is the only other human being in the poem.


Note : 

Depression 
Isolation 

Homelessness
Existence

The Dispossessed


Summery :


The narrator describes his loneliness as he walks the isolated city streets at night. He has walked beyond the city limits and along every city lane, but has never found anything to comfort him in his depression. Even when he makes contact with another person (such as the watchman), the narrator is unwilling to express his feelings because he knows that no one will understand him. At one point he hears a cry from a nearby street, but realizes that it is not meant for him; no one is waiting for him. He looks up at the moon in the sky and acknowledges that time has no meaning for him because his isolation is unending.

Analysis

This poem is written in strict iambic pentameter, with the fourteen lines of a traditional sonnet. 
In terms of rhyme scheme, Frost uses the “tercets with a couplet ending, rhyming aba bcb cdc dad aa. 


Irony is suggested by the use of the word acquainted, which is we know of something or someone but at a distance. It's a word far removed from befriended or intimate with.


This poem is commonly understood to be a description of the narrator’s experiences with depression. The most crucial element of his depression is his complete isolation. 

The night could well be a metaphor for depression, despair and loneliness. It could be Frost's own inner(ভিতরের)world that is being expressed but the language which means depression, isolation and homeless. 


Frost emphasizes his loneliness by using the first-person term “I” at the beginning of seven of the lines. Even though the watchman has a physical presence in the poem, he does not play a mental or emotional role: the narrator, the sole “I,” remains solitary his inner depression. 

When the interrupted cry breaks over the roofs from another street, he stops his feet, but it is a cry that concerns him not at all--no one calls him home.He has no family or friends to wait for him .

The narrator’s inability to make eye contact with the people that he meets suggests that his depression has made him incapable of interacting in normal society. While normal people are associated with the day (happiness, sunlight, optimism), the narrator is solely acquainted (পরিচিত)with the night, and thus can find nothing in common with those around him. 

And when his glimpse at the clock tower suggests to him the indifference of time--it neither guides nor judges his journey, it just flows on inexorably.

Frost uses present perfect tense, in the poem which is used to describe something from the recent past, as well as something from the past that is still ongoing in the present. It seems as if the narrator’s depression could be from the recent past because of the phrase: “I have been…” However, the verb tense also suggests that his depression could still be a constant, if unseen, force. With that in mind, it is unclear whether the narrator will truly be able to come back to society or if his depression will resurface and force him to be, once again, acquainted with the night.

 google : answare 
I have been one acquainted with the night.



sonnet L:
erza Rima in Iambic Pentameter
This poem is written in terza rima, a form first used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy. The poem is written in three-line stanzas, which are linked by a rhyme scheme that goes across the stanzas. 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 takes out the middle line at the end, ending the rhyme scheme's continuity as he ends the poem.

Frost does not traditionally use terza rima in his poetry, but often experiments with different forms; we think that he has a particular reason to use terza rima for this poem. By moving forward while echoing the past, this rhyme scheme seems to go in circles, just like the moon, an important element in this poem.


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. For example, the stressed syllables in this line are bold and in italic:

I feel like much of this decisiveness regarding the narrator's fate comes from the turn, which I deduced to be the last line of the third tercet and the first line of the fourth tercet. The spaced line in between serves as an effective pause mechanism for the readers, almost as if we are hanging on every last word. When we see that the cry "Came over houses from another street", we essentially think that this might be the turning point for the narrator, perhaps his chance to become a hero and get back in the light. However, these hopes are absolutely SHATTERED in the next line "But not to call me back, or say good-by;". We really feel for the narrator, looking at him essentially as a figure upon whom life has passed by.

This leads me to the big meaning/theme point. Essentially, Robert's Sonnet effectively uses the confines of the Shakespearean Sonnet in order to emphasize through the narrator that past actions have the power to permanently shape one's fate for the rest of one's life.




Commentary  : 

Robert Frost's Acquainted With The Night is a poem that takes the reader into the dark side of the human psyche. On the surface it is a short, uninspiring journey on foot through the streets of a city at night. Delve a little deeper however and this poem reveals much more, in typical Frost fashion.

'Poetry provides one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another' said Frost. You can see this idea emerge again and again in his poems. Acquainted With The Night is perhaps one of his most extreme examples.

Frost was no stranger to despair. He lost two sons, one through suicide, and two daughters when young. Another developed mental illness. Family stresses over a number of years induced depression and black moods. He found some consolation in his poetry.