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.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Despite urges to create order and to unify
experience, the persona is subject to his own poetic
creation. He incrementally decreases what he has.
His goal to possess some sense of unity is offset by
the abatement of certainty and direction. In other
words, the persona strives for creation but in vying
with a desire for certainty, his creation is lessened,
one possession at a time. This lessening is empha-
sized in the structure of the poem. The third tercet
begins as the first two did, with ‘‘I have.’’ In all, the
poem contains seven present perfect tense state-
ments beginning with these words. As highlighted
by John Robert Doyle, from the first tercet to the
fourth the number of these statements decreases
(167). Three appear in the first tercet, two in the
second, one in the third, and none in the fourth. As
the poem progresses, the persona expresses a loss
of experience with something partially identifiable,
decimating clarity and definition. In other words,
he is not conscious of what he has anymore. By the
fourth tercet definite experience and certainty have
been nullified. The last line, however, reinstates the
first line, and this repetition requires a figurative
reading in a fashion similar to that explained by
John Ciardi in his reading of the last line of ‘‘Stop-
ping By Woods on a Snowy Evening’’ (Ciardi,
145). In ‘‘Acquainted with the Night’’ the repeti-
tion serves as a refrain that encloses the form but
then extends it into issues of conscience and
equivocal questions about existence.
Frost offers the intricacies of the poem in
other ways also, particularly in his craft of word
choice and rhythm. Line seven effectively employs
alliteration in ‘‘stood still and stopped the sound of
feet.’’ In this line sound and sense merge, as the
footsteps and their ceasing are simulated by the
alliteration. Frost varies the meter in the line,
beginning with an iamb in ‘‘I have’’ and then
using a spondee in ‘‘stood still.’’ This emphasizes
the stillness that accompanies the stopping of foot-
steps. But again Frost achieves a slight paradox as
the spondee itself implies a steady continuation of
action: the feet cease but something else remains
active. Frost captures the ongoing conflict, or the
yin yang, of the active versus the passive, of the
conscious versus the unconscious, of indifference
versus conscience. The persona tells us that the
part of him that had been active is now passive
and vice versa. In effect, however, the clarity of
this perpetual working of opposites is confounded
by the fact that the unconscious becomes more
active and the conscious verges into passivity. As
in the inverted sonnet form, Frost has inverted the
ideas of the poem. This inversion pivots on the
persona’s conscience, the part of him that feels
guilt and ponders wrong and right. The last three
stanzas signal the emergence of the conscience and
invigorate the interplay between conscious and
unconscious. Frost’s portrait of a modern mind
hinges on the addition of a third element, the
conscience, as a mediator and a ‘‘solution of con-
flict posed by dualism’’ (Cirlot, 222).
The conscience imbues the conflict between
the external world and the persona’s internal
world. This same conflict is not new to the poem,
for it runs the whole of the introductory sestet. The
persona abruptly stops his walking as he hears ‘‘an
interrupted cry’’ (Frost, 8). What, we may ask,
interrupts the cry? It is the same conscience that
had interrupted him twice before: upon his view of
the saddest city lane and upon his passing by the
watchman. The conscience heaves in sight three
times. His conscience is an acquaintance with his
own night, or the sometimes blind persistence of
the conscious mind. His awareness of his position
plagues him, overriding any comfortable solitude
and breaking the impenetrable void of the night.
By continuing after the cry, by looking past the sad
street and away from the watchman, the persona
seeks comfort in the night, supposing that noth-
ingness cannot create a disturbance. Here, the
persona assures himself of something, and like
Chekhov’s character Ananyev, he endeavors to
transcend nihilism.
The cry that pervades the night piques and
stirs the conscience. It ‘‘came over houses’’
(Frost, 9), and thus to the persona it seems to
emanate from a civilization blanketed by dark-
ness. Its purpose is unclear; it does not ‘‘call...
back or say good-bye’’ (Frost, 10). He stops what
he is doing and releases the reader into ambigu-
ity. Does the persona recognize the cry? Does he
think he may recognize the cry and then decide
that he doesn’t? Does he recognize the cry and
choose to ignore its plea? Is the cry a plea at all?
He does stop in his tracks, indicating that the cry
at least seems familiar, like that of an acquaint-
ance. He does listen for it to call him back or to
say good-bye, as if he left someone in distress or
pain. The possible interpretations multiply fromAcquainted with the Night