The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the earth like a leather glove.

Before the leaves can mount again
To fill the trees with another shade,
They must go down past things coming up.
They must go down into the dark decayed.

They must be pierced by flowers and put
Beneath the feet of dancing flowers.
However it is in some other world
I know that this is way in ours.

Analysis, meaning and summary of Robert Frost's poem In Hardwood Groves

9 Comments

  1. Dryden01 says:

    Frost believed in reincarnation and this is a way for him to indicate that concept. Our souls renew through the natural processes and boundaries of each life and return to continue a new cycle. The more correct poem to examine for his view on the meaning of life would be found in “The Trial By Existence,” perhaps his most interesting insight of all.

  2. Gee says:

    In my humble opinion, this is a logical way to interpret the poem:

    The same leaves over and over again! – Birth of new babies
    They fall from giving shade above – They leave their mother

    To make one texture of faded brown
    And fit the earth like a leather glove. – They are all the same to fit society

    Before the leaves can mount again
    To fill the trees with another shade, – Before they can recover from that change to make new babies
    They must go down past things coming up. – Love
    They must go down into the dark decayed. – Various problems
    They must be pierced by flowers and put – Heartbreak
    Beneath the feet of dancing flowers. – Rebirth (recovery)

    However it is in some other world
    I know that this is way in ours. – This proves that Frost wrote about our society and not trees or animals

  3. Jim says:

    My name is Jim and this poem is about nothing.

    • Justin Baldwin says:

      Yeah Jim, I hope that in the 15 years since you have posted your comment that you have learned to behave! (Just kidding, I just hope that you have grown more mature and are doing well).

  4. Alex says:

    In Hardwood Groves by Robert Frost is a poem about the cycle of life on Earth, and the trials and tribulations human beings have to go through. The poems literal or surface meaning is a story of the life cycle of a tree, with the leaves falling and new leaves taking their place. This, I believe is actually a large metaphor for the human life cycle, with humans being born, growing up, then dieing, as new babies take their place. Frost uses repetition heavily in this poem, as well as a common rhyming pattern to signify the repetition of human life.

    “Over and over” is the first sign of repetition in this poem and is significant of the many children being born a day. “They fall from the giving shade above” is signifying the children leaving the mother’s womb, leaving her protection and entering the world as a defenseless baby. The connotations of the colour brown are dirt, mud, poor people and other negative thoughts. This represents the corruption and downfall of modern human society. The first stanza in general is discussing new life being born into a disasterous world.

    The second stanza then starts bringing the issue of sadness and conflict, which is inevitable during human life. “Before the leaves can mount again”, or before our human life can end, Frost tells us we “must” face life’s challenges, including “[going] down past things coming up”, (jealousy), “[going] down into the dark decayed”, (sadness or depression) and “[being] pierced by flowers (heartbreak). Frost finishes the poem in first person point of view, switching from third person to show the change from the matphorical cycle of the tree to the realism last line, “I know that this is way in ours”, to confirm he is talking about humans and not trees.

  5. Sarah says:

    This poem’s theme is basically about human cruelity. The leaves fall on the ground from protecting the ground from the sun and is ignored because of the insignifance of a leave from a tree. The leaves provided protection and then are trampled on until they grow old. This poem is realism.

  6. Ken says:

    Yes, while this poem is about the cyclical movement of the natural world, it is also about the recycling power of the natural world and life. The leaves of the tree, which fall to the ground and lay around the base, eventually decay and become nutrients that supply the roots. The tree will then use the nutrients to produce new leaves in the spring, so in essence, the leaves are the same again and again. Now, let us compare that with the leaves of life. We discard old ideas, worries, and problems every year that have been part of our very existence. Not only do we discard excess baggage, but we allow it to lie at our feet as a reminder of our triumphs and also our mistakes. Just as Frost’s “Hardwood Groves” uses its old parts to nourish continuing life, we too recycle our “old leaves” to nurture our own lives.

  7. Jeremy says:

    This poem is very short for you people that like to have short and easy poems to work with. The poem is about the cycle of life a tree takes place. That is how we americans live our daily like.

  8. Kathryn says:

    This poem is about the cyclical movement of the natural world as been paralleled to Frost’s own existence.’The same leaves over and over again!’is an extneded metaphor for the trial and tribulations that we as human beings must undergo (‘…down past things coming up…into the dark decayed.’) before we too can be ‘born again’ as the ‘dancing flowers’ of the cycle. Frost aknowledges that this cycle is the way of life on earth, and ‘However it is in some other world…this is the way in ours.’. As far as the title of the poem is concerned, without reading too much into the literal placing of the poem, on a metaphorical level the fact that this is ‘hardwood’ is indicative of the cycle being a somewhat hard but natural event.

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