“To feel the earth as rough”:The verisimilitude underlying Robert Frost’s“To Earthward”

摘要

In the analysis of the less salient poem “To Earthward” written by Robert Frost,three layers in the protagonist’s pursuit have been found:the sensuous joy,the intense pain and the “weight and strength” to get such a feeling; yet the conviction in such a“down-to-earth”behavior is betrayed by a little word“as”at the end of this poem,which unfolds that the above confession is in essence a transcendental presupposition and what the poet is obsessed with turns out not to be some concrete truth but his verisimilar fantasy.