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.
The predominance of ‘‘I’’ tells us that this
poem is centered in one figure. Also, the tercets
and terza rima form draw attention to the num-
ber three as a building block, reminiscent of the
way Dante’sDivine Comedy‘‘is dominated by
the symbolic trinity’’ (Boorstin, 260). The triple
terza rima rhyme aba bcb cdc and so on) inter-
locks and suggests an interdependency of con-
tent and form, as each stanza is linked to its
contiguous stanzas. In the seeming ease of
crafted rhyme, Frost masks the fusion of content
and form via superb technique. This unity multi-
plies in other things, such as the joining of poetic
forms in the terza rima sonnet and the trinity
implicit in the repetition of threes.
The first stanza is composed of three end-
stopped lines that are dependent on the others.
Commencing the poem with what will develop
into its intrinsic ideas, the three lines summon
three archetypes, or symbols of things indigenous
to our human condition. Night (darkness), rain
(water), and light promptly add deep dimensions
to the poem. Similar to Dante’s use of terza rima,
Frost’s first tercet provides a trinity of its own.
Evocative, familiar, yet magically unsettling,
these archetypes present a universal human expe-
rience for the reader. From these archetypes the
poem springs toward the ‘‘spiritual synthesis’’
(Cirlot, 222) signified by the number three.
The first line sets an inescapable mood and
aligns the reader with a mythical conception of
consciousness. The present-perfect tense indi-
cates that the persona’s acquaintance with the
night began in the past and continues into the
present. In accord with the archetypal night, his
acquaintance is immemorial and ongoing, hav-
ing no stated beginning or a projected end. The
use of ‘‘one’’ signifies a single person, a lone
consciousness withdrawn from the daylight and
on the periphery of the conscious world of the
city. No ‘‘Other’’ (Sartre, 223) is present. He is
now but one. No man-made meaning system
surrounds him, and thus, he feels a need to create
a form through artistry with the Word. His
frame of mind is further described by the word
‘‘acquainted,’’ which literally frames the poem in
lines one and fourteen. The word conveys a sense
of familiarity, recognition, and a slight indiffer-
ence, but not a complete affinity. The persona’s
conception of the night is ambivalent. In the
beginning of the poem, he views himself as some-
what detached from night, yet at the same time
lured toward it as a suitable place for his lone-
liness. His acquaintance, as acquaintances are,
lacks a clear identification with the night but also
urges him to explore it, else he would not go
beyond ‘‘the furthest city light’’ (Frost, 3).
Whether he seeks to alleviate his loneliness or
to feel ‘‘solid lonesomeness’’ for the solitude of
‘‘listening to stillness’’ (Twain, 97), we do not
know. The night, a mystery to be penetrated,
can paradoxically comfort him either way.
In this way, Frost’s poem is what Carl Jung
calls ‘‘visionary.’’ In visionary literature ‘‘the expe-
rience that furnishes the material for artistic
expression is no longer familiar. It is a strange
something that derives its existence from the hin-
terland of man’s mind.... It is a primordial expe-
rience which surpasses man’s understanding’’
(Jung, 211). The acquaintance with the night orig-
inates from this hinterland, the atavistic home-
land of the collective unconscious. Darkness is
that archetype which signifies the unknown, the
unconscious, mystery, and ‘‘primigenial chaos’’
(Cirlot, 73). In the poem, the desire to fathom it
is transformed into an artistic attempt to create
out of chaos. This is no small chore, so the per-
sona couples two traditional poetic forms (terza
rima and the sonnet) as a foundation for creation.
The endeavor to maintain order defines visionary
literature: ‘‘our intuitions point to things that are
unknown and hidden.... If they ever become
conscious, they are intentionally kept back and
concealed.... In the day-time [man] believes in
our ordered cosmos, and he tries to maintain
this faith against the fear of chaos that besets
him by night’’ (Jung, 216). Frost’s poem enacts
this drama of the modern mind.
The persona willingly removes himself from
the concrete forms of a modern city and releases
himself to artistic forms, through which he con-
fronts the chief forces of archetypal creation. In
this visionary poem, he poses in the role of God,
as a Creator. In the cosmogonies of many cul-
tural mythologies, the creation of the universe
begins with a God-figure working among the
three elements of darkness, water, and light.
The first stanza swiftly summons the three ele-
ments and does so in the same succession as the
creation myths. First, all is a primeval darkness,Acquainted with the Night