Eliot to assert a mythical, spiritual introspection
like that of Campbell.
The second tercet shows another side of the
persona. Here the persona looks ‘‘down the sad-
dest city lane’’ (Frost, 4) rather than traveling it.
Lowering his eyes from the watchman’s glance,
he turns from human contact. The persona con-
sciously avoids reminders of human misery, as
well as those conceptual essences (such as law)
invented by humanity in order to define and
understand itself. What the deplorable side of
the human condition needs most is sympathy
and human contact, both of which our persona
is unwilling to offer. But his cursory look does
acknowledge an acquaintance with the pain of
others. His familiarity, however, is no less cruel
than kind. This ambivalence, as part of the
human condition, demands that the saddest
city lane impress upon him. He hazards an
encounter although it adds to his loneliness,
and in disquietude he ponders things in the
same way a Stoic endures the pangs of life. This
tendency in the persona is also evidenced by his
movement beyond the known form, beyond the
security of street lights and shelter. He steps into
the darkness with a hopeful hesitancy to con-
front his painful vastness; whatever adds to his
pain also gives him solace. The dark night will
propitiously offer the light of the next day. The
rain that plangently pitter-patters will regenerate
life in a natural cycle. In the same way, he hopes
that the superlative ‘‘saddest lane’’ will offer its
counterpart. His introspection bears a stoic
numbness yet a keen sensitivity.
Continuing the drama of the rite, the sus-
pended image of the watchman rounds off the
second tercet, with the poem’s second human
character. This person remains masked in the
impersonality of his occupation, just as the per-
sona seems masked in the indifference of the
night. Both the persona and the watchman fulfill
the same role. The word ‘‘watchman’’ relies on
the sense of sight, which is the sense that com-
poses the persona’s surroundings: the night, the
furthest city light, the saddest city lane, the eyes.
And instrumental to the watchman is his func-
tion at his post as the embodiment of conscience,
or its visual sign. His purpose is to aid those in
distress, yet he is the very presence of it; he
reminds us of distress as we think about the
necessity of his work. The watchman, then,
refers back to the persona, the conscience, and
God; all of which monitor urges, thoughts, and
actions. The persona charges the watchman as a
modern archetype, for the purpose of having a
conceivable, symbolic outlet. The fact that the
persona drops his eyes from the watchman indi-
cates a measure of guilt or reticence so dissonant
that it resounds with a din from his conscience all
the way to God.
The second tercet, then, underscores the
power and depth of the first. Let us notice that
the images of the first two tercets are imperso-
nal and external—darkness, rain, light, a street,
awatchman.Butatthesametimetheseimages
reflect internal conflicts, moving closer to the
conscience of the persona. Against the cityscape
the persona sketches the street and the watch-
man as symbols of potential safety. But against
the dark night of the city they produce nothing
but homelessness, guilt, and despair. The mod-
ern mind’s dependency on these images is
obfuscated by the resonance of the archetypes
in the first stanza. Here the mythical and the
modern-made archetypes overlap. The street
and the watchman imbricate the past with the
present, bridging the gulf that divides the myth-
ical assurance of an ordered belongingness and
the modern homelessness of a wandering con-
science. The first two stanzas form one sestet,
leaving an octet to respond. Readers of sonnets
have come to expect the octet first, with its
following sestet framing the complex problem
of the octet into a conceivable perspective.
Frost, however, inverts this with his adapta-
tions to the terza rima sonnet. The octet will
expand the enigma of the sestet. In one com-
pound sentence the octet presents a short nar-
rative drama that personalizes what seemed
impersonal in the five sentences of the sestet.
Paradoxically, Frost expands the poem by pre-
senting a single narrative of one, lone individ-
ual. The vast forces of the first sestet form an
undercurrent for the short narrative drama.
The created upheaval of a complex human con-
science is the subject, and because the persona is
compelled to employ the collective symbols of
creation, he enacts and sustains the mytholog-
ical depth of the modern mind.
In the last three stanzas, Frost’s use of poetic
form and language advance the archetypal asso-
ciations and themes discussed above:
I have stood still and stopped the sound
of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,Acquainted with the Night