Sunday, April 29, 2012

Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same

In the poem "Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same" Frost raises an important, and I believe, heavily sought after question. He says that in the music that birds make we can hear the influence of Eve. He states his opinion on this question in the ending couplet in which he says, "Never again would birds' song be the same / And to do that to birds was why she came" (13-14). Frost is stating God's purpose in creating Eve in this final line. He implies that God created humans in order to affect nature and the world he had already created. I think we have to look past whether or not the reader believes in creationism and simply look at this poem from a Christian lens. And so the debate here is whether Frost is correct in saying that humans were meant to alter nature and be the greatest influence in the world, or if nature is the true influencer and humans are actually subject to it. I think this is something many people question because as humans we tend to think of nature's purpose to serve us, while some think nature came first, and therefore, should be held in higher reverence. Also interesting is that Frost highlights this question by putting it in the couplet where it stands out the most. It is interesting how the answer to a largely debated question of existence can be placed within two lines of a poem.

1 comment:

  1. I wonder, to how much of the poem does the "He would declare" apply? Does it carry through to the final lines, or does the speaker's voice take over? If the poem remains in Adam's (I think) voice during the final lines, I don't think we can read it as an assertion of the speaker. Even if this is the speaker, this poems lacks a tone of certainty that leaves those final lines ambiguous. It says nothing of the influence the birds had on Eve, or whether Eve's influence was a positive or a negative one. In fact, the only thing that seems certain to me is that, upon hearing the birds' songs after Eve's arrival, Adam imagines he hears Eve within it, and that she must be the cause of their eloquence. I think (though I'm not fully sure) that this speaks more to human perception than to truth or God.

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