Tone Analysis: "Ghost House" by Robert Frost

Ghost House

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.


O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.


I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;


The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.


It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me--
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.


They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

Frost develops a tone of melancholy contentment throughout this poem. The poem has a sort of sad beauty about it, with images of nature, triumphant over the homes, fences, and roads of man. The rebirth and regrowth of this nature, however, is depicted with careful diction maintaining the funereal tone of the poem. For instance, the rasperries grow in a "cellar in which the daylight falls," and image that implies a death or degradation with the term "fall" (as opposed to the common terms for sunshine: "shines" Fills" "lights up"). It's as if the sunlight is defeated in this cellar, an intriguing foreshadow to the eventual revelation that this poem is a euphemism for a graveyard, since death is archetypally seen as the defeat of light (or life) by darkness (or death.) Another example of the delicate sadness maintained in the nature imagery is the second stanza, in which terms like "shield," "mowing field," "chops," and "healed" imply a harsher, darker take on the overgrowth of nature (the word "copse" even looks like the word "corpse"). There is a slight tone shift in the last half of the third stanza and the 4th stanza, where the melancholy lightens and the speaker tells of bats that "tumble and dart" and a fluttering whipoorwhill, images evoking life and joy. There is also a barrage of verbs in these lines, providing an energy which contrasts with the slow and descriptive sentence structure of the first stanzas--a hint that the speaker is "waking up" and is about to give the thrust of the poem (as most of it has been description thus far). This shift in energy gives the poem a more optimistic and positive tone, at least until the last two stanzas, in which the speaker shifts back into a more melancholy tone and seems unwilling to accept the fact that he is, in fact, dead (it's as if he is in denial). He describes the corpses as "mute...tireless folk" who "share the unlit place with me" (the "unlit place" refers to the "lonely house" he has discussed throughout the poem), a lovely and euphemistic description of dead bodies. His descriptions do depict a contentment with his present situation, however. By describing the dead lovers as "sweet companions" and in using euphemism, he portrays the lighter, closer to bittersweet side of death, and thus conveys his slightly positive attitude towards his own death.