Acquainted with the Night

“Acquainted with the Night,” first published in 1927, features topics often found in Robert Frost’s poetry: isolation, sadness, and despair. As the speaker describes his literal journey walking through the night, his experience becomes a metaphor for a journey through a different kind of darkness. The poem’s tone is personal and conversational, drawing readers into the speaker’s emotional life.

The structure of the poem contributes to the journey motif. An example of a terza rima sonnet, “Acquainted with the Night” is composed of three-line stanzas, or tercets, featuring an interlocking end-rhyme scheme; the end-word of the second line in each tercet rhymes with the first and third lines in the following tercet. The sonnet ends with a couplet, a pair of rhyming lines. The poem is written in iambic pentameter with five beats in each line featuring the weak beat/strong beat iambic pattern of rhythm. The rhyme scheme and rhythm pattern create a sense of progression or moving forward—through the text and through the speaker’s journey.