It went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I though of the door
With no lock to lock.
I blew out the light,
I tip-toed the floor,
And raised both hands
In prayer to the door.
But the knock came again.
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill
And descended outside.
Back over the sill
I bade a ‘Come in’
To whatever the knock
At the door may have been.
So at a knock
I emptied my cage
To hide in the world
And alter with age.
This is a very powerful poem. You can read it again and again and it still has a new meaning each time. From the first line I knew there could be multiple meanings but I still find new ones each time I see it, and they all are correct interpretations.
The first stanza says the figure had waited, or hid, for many before something came knocking.
In the second he’s hoping this thing will go away, but doesn’t want it to know he’s there.
In the third he’s escaping out the window, trying to run from whoever it is.
By the forth stanza he’s made it to the ground but has a sort of nervous curiosity, he climbs back up to sill and tells it to come in. He knows who it is but not what it is.
In the final stanza he has run out in to world to hide and change.
This is quite an interesting poem that can be quite ambiguous at times. The poem already hits you as it begins with the lines “it went many years” which can suggest that there was something done by the character many years ago, possibly something that he cannot escape from, hence the title “the lockless door.” “In prayer to the door” may suggest that the character is praying for the event to pass by, hoping for a turn for the best. The characters discovery of the window sill and climbing out of it hints that the character wants to run away from the confrontation of the door knocker, suggesting it’s a moment where the character does not want to be in. When the character “bades a come in” this may mean that his conscience is starting to tell him to confront this door knocker and settle it, although still hanging on the window still as if he cannot decide whether to confront or flee. With the knocking continuing the “ I emptied my cage, to hide in the world and alter with age.” May suggest that the character has fled from the confrontation with the door knocker and decides to hide from it, waiting to disappear with age.
In all it is in my opinion that the character is in a situation where he does not want to be in and decides to hide from the problem and waiting for it to disappear with age or in time, although there is some hint that he still wants to confront the problem having already fled from it.
This poem seems to be presenting an imagery of the sense of fear that surrounds the author when something comes to haunt him. This fear comes in the form of a knock at the door. The author responds by blowing out a candle in his room. and tiptoe-ing across the floor. This gives us a sense of darkness and tension. you can just imagine the room being dark and silent. This is the initial confrontation the author has with the knock. At first, it seems like he is going to confront the fear. However, the poem later mentions him “Climbed on the sill, and descended outside.”
i avidly dislike this poem!
a) because it is literay dribble
b) because it is too lose in its wording
when reading this poem two ideas came to mind, the first being the concept of a repunzel based story, the lockless door holding her prisoner with the witch holding her prisoner and the “come in” being said by the prince to lure the witch in and kill her.
the other idea is one of a woman or man coming out and revealing himself as a person. Initially i thought of a gay person coming out and asking for acceptance by “bading come in.” Again this poem is too open for discussion too many gaps but the openess leaves room for imagination
I’d like to answer this question with another question. Could god microwave a burito so hot that not even he could eat it?
I believe the comment to be about escaping the grasp of someone who may be abusing the subject of the poem. In this case either a small boy or child, whos father is approaching. After the knock on the door he prays that it is not his father, but on the second knock, he flees to the window, where he climbs out and then calls his father into the room. The distraction of having to enter the room to search for the boy gives him a small head start on his escape into the world. He flees out the window of his “cage” and into the world to “alter with age”.
People die, making this poem all the more meaningful. Think about that.
i reckon its about death and the average persons’ natural resistance, and yet natural curiosity, about death. climbing out of the sill represents the resistance, or fear, of death. However, coming back in represents the curiosity of every person about dying. in the end, i think the person decided that his cuirosity was not going to kill him, and even though he lived out his life growing old and changing, death will come to him as it comes to us all.
I really like this poem. I’ve been through a lot lately and to me this poem means that we are prone to hide from what we fear and opportunities that are challenging. I think the cage being emptied is representative of an unsatisfied heart because of missed opportunities.
i think that this poem shows more than just fear…but it also shows that there once was pain. If you’ve been hurt then theres always the fear of that pain that follows…i like this poem.
Everybody’s heart is a lockless door. This “person” did not let love come in therefore the cage was empty.
i like this poem a lot because it is showing how robert feels
i lik this peom sooooooooo much…im confused but it makes me warm inside despite it’s obligatory nature. he is obviously feeling guilty about talking to the devil
i htink it might also be about something that you wishes to do but never really have the guts or the motivations to do it… until something happen which triggers you to do it… we talk about venturing into something new… but not ready for change… until something happen that threaten us to change… but then again “to hide in the world” signifies that we run from the problem rather than facing it head on…
it is a very deep-meaning poem… i guess i still undecided as to what frost is trying to present…
what book is the poem from
I had to choose a poem to explicate for my creative writing class unit on poetry. I chose the lockless door because it intrigued me. i initially had no idea what it was about but by reading other’s interpretations of it and making my own conclusions, i decided that it is about a past event that comes back to haunt him. That is the knock and the author had evaded said event for a long time but with the door, being his conscience, being a lockless door, it is impossible to keep intruders out. When Frost says he blew out the light and tiptoed, he was trying to hide and sneak away from this haunting event. WHen he raises his hands in prayer to the door, he is begging the door to keep the haunting thing away for just a moment longer while he tries to escape. The knock coming again is a sign that he cannot hide from it and when he climbs out the window he is either still trying to escape the knock or he is making recompense for whatever it was. When he climbs back over the sill and invites the knocker in he is saying that now that i know what i am up against, i can face it head-on. In conclusion he states that when the reminder of his past came, he opened himself, became vulnerable and as the result he was able to over come this haunting part of his past and in turn blend in with the world and move on with his life.
This poem can be looked at from many different angles, each making this poem look like it’s centered around fairly different topics or parts of life. The morale of the poem could be of guilt, or bad memories and a tragedy, or about friends and even romance. It is very probable that Robert intended for his poem to be looked at from various different angles. For the purpose of being able to finish writing this sometime this century, I will take on the guilt angle.
So, if we assume that this poem is centered on guilt, than, in the first stanza, the first line could mean that it had been many years since the thing which had made him feel guilty had happened. The knock on the door is his conscience, irritating his mind and making him feel guilty and reminding him of his wrongdoing. The “knocking” is somewhat polite, and so he is just annoyed at it. If it were a hammering instead of a knocking on the door, he would be feeling more nervous that annoyed, almost scared. The “at last” part of this poem means that his guilt has finally caught up with him. When he says “and I thought of the door with no lock to lock” he means that it was inevitable that he would feel guilty, it would reach him no matter what because the door to his conscience is unlocked. This stanza contains the repetition of the word “lock”, which emphasizes the fact that the guilt has finally reached his conscience, with the “door” a metaphorical entrance to his conscience.
In the second stanza, where he says that he blew out the light, that could mean that he is trying to hide from his conscience. The fact that he is “tip-toeing” proves this fact. The “raising of both his hands in prayer to the door” is a prayer that, hopefully, the door will stay closed and he won’t feel the pain of guilt.
The third stanza shows that his prayer didn’t work, and the guilt is still trying to come in. he says that his window was wide because it was a beckoning exit from his guilty conscience. At this point in the poem, he starts trying to do something about this, so after finding this “window”, the metaphorical exit, or way around his guilt (the opposite of the door) he tries to break free of it. This may also mean repentance of the sin that caused his guilt. His “descending outside” means that he succeeded in avoiding the guilt, at least temporarily.
For the fourth stanza, the term “back over the sill” would mean looking back to the past, at his guilty conscience. Now, the rest of this stanza could take on two different meanings. For the first one, let us assume that the guilt is like a person knocking on the door to this person’s house. One is that he is bidding the guilt to come into an empty home, where he has just escaped from, so the guilt enters the house, but he is not there, he is outside the window. He could be either mocking the guilt from outside the house because it expected someone to be there and the house is empty, or he could be buying time for him to escape from the guilt. The second, and deeper meaning is rather different. It is that he accepts the guilt from afar rather hesitantly, because he finally realizes that he cannot run from his guilty conscience forever, but he is still a little uncertain of accepting his sin/actions. The last two lines of this stanza takes on two meanings. The words “whatever the knock at the door may have been” means that he doesn’t know how he will feel after accepting the guilt, and the second meaning or use of these words are, as I said before, to let the reader look at this poem from a variety of angles, the “guilt” on of which I have taken up
The fifth and last stanza is a conclusion to the poem, and is probably the most difficult to interpret. It means that the “knock” (which could be something that reminded him of his guilt which he had evaded for so long) caused him to empty his “cage” of guilt, pain and remembrance from his sin, by forcing him to “climb out the window”. The last two lines of the poem require much thought, because it raises questions like; ‘why would he hide if he has accepted his guilt?’(third line) or ‘why would he alter with age?’(fourth line). There are two answers to the first question, depending on how you interpreted the part of the poem where he “bade come in” to whatever was knocking on the door. If you interpreted that part of the poem as him repenting his sin, answer is that he is not hiding as you would think; due to shame, fear, etc. of the sin that he has committed, but he is hiding from more sins and more guilt that could attack his conscience like before. If you thought that part of the poem meant that he has hiding outside the house from the guilt, the answer is simple; that he is still hiding from his guilt, although it’s inevitable (this angle makes him look foolish). The answer to the second question is that he would alter with age because these sorts of emotions are inevitable, and the experiences of such emotions would change him as he grows older.
thanks!
Frost occassionally wrote on Christian themes, and the “alter with age” ending suggest that this may be such a work. He goes for many years, perhaps dreading a divine call. When it finally comes, he is forced to have to deal with it. That knock offers a promise of eternity, but he is afraid that answering it involves commitment, risk, and involvement with the unknown. So he answers only tentatively, from outside the window. Because it lacks conviction, his answer is found to be wanting. So he ends up rejecting the call and living out a natural life without God.
I wanted to read everybody’s comments to try and form my own opinion for a paper I’m writing, and actually, it worked. I think this poem is about feeling guilty. The knocking on the door is your conscience, pounding on your thoughts, reminding you of your sin. When he blows out the candle, he is trying to hide, to escape, thinking that if he is no longer visible, then the knock will go away, he yearns to be alone and in peace. But, the knocking continues, his last attempt is to escapew through the window, to break free, he finally realizes that there is hope, he is outside of his cage, he seeks repentance, the void is filled.
I think this poem is about him having someone that wants to be his friend or something but he dose not want to let them in evan though he says they can come in he dosent let them