For the last nine years I have worked in the summer for a lawn care company. So when I was going through a list of poems by Robert Frost I came across one titled "Mowing." The title caught my attention cause of my summer labor so I decided to see what it was all about. After reading it I realized it was about more than just mowing grass, it was about the rewards of labor. Frost says this is more rewarding than any fantasy image.
The poem is only fourteen lines long and uses a rather unusual rhyme scheme: ABC ABD ECD GEH GH. From what I could tell of the meter, only line twelve is close to iambic, the others I could really figure out other than they all seem to have either four or five stressed syllables a piece. Frost uses two lines in the poem to create the sound of a scythe moving back and forth as it cuts the grass.
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,.
Something perhaps, about the lack of sound. .
In this section by reversing perhaps and something in the following line he creates a sense of sound. With the repetition of the soft w's and s's he ads to this sense and brings a feeling of soft whispers.
The poem is about mowing down the grass to make hay, but in doing this the reader/author realize that its more than just labor. Frost is saying that the truth of hard labor is very satisfying. "Or easy gold at the hand of fay (fairy) or elf:/ Anything more than the truth would have seemed to weak." He doesn't need gold form fictitious elves or fairies, the rewards of hard labor are enough. But also in a way he is helping nature out. "My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make." So while enjoying the work is also doing something that most likely would not have happened on its own.
For not being "in to" poetry that much I enjoyed reading this one. It reminded me of how much I enjoy working in the summer, and how rewarding manual labor can be. That's my interpretation of Frost's "Mowing," there are probably a lot of things I missed, but like I said poetry really isn't my thing.