I take The Runaway, among other things, as a comment on deity. Frost has our gaze pan down from the snowy sky through mountain and pasture to the Morgan—a substantiation in stages. And then he has some fun: he had to bolt; we heard the miniature thunder. Line eight speaks loudly to me of the antithetical nature of deity. It's a poetic manifestation of the word adumbrate. It's a great notion: shadow as something which both reveals and conceals; revelation and mystery. The word speaks to the intellect, the line to the imagination. It's a gem.
|