Acquainted With The Night And T. S. Eliot's Acquainted With The Night

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Recommended: Importance of thought structure in poems

Rhythm Rhyme and Structure

Poetry is the expression of feelings and ideas through different styles of writing; this can be presented in many different fashions. An artist of poetry uses distinct structural patterns such as rhymes, meter, symbolism or tone to convey their message to the reader. For this essay I will demonstrate how the use of these patterns help and or hinder the reader’s experience in understanding the meaning; I will be reviewing and analyzing two specific pieces of work; Robert Frost’s Acquainted with the Night and T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
Frost’s poem Acquainted with the Night expresses sadness and unhappiness. The poem reflects an empty feeling of loneliness and being surrounded by darkness. The rhyme in stanza one, ending with night and light, is important to the tone because it helps the reader understand the feeling frost is trying to convey. The contrast between light and dark has often been used to describe feelings of sadness or loneliness. In this use, it conveys the absence of light, furthering the idea of loneliness. The use of the word “I” repeatedly emphasizes the fact that he is alone. This sets the tone of the poem and the structure reflects on this tone.
Frost wrote Acquainted with the Night in iambic pentameter, which is shown by the characteristic that each line contains exactly 10 syllables. This is important because the steady pattern gives a sense of rhythm to the poem and can be related

to the footsteps of the narrator as he walks through the night. The pattern of using end-stop lines in this poem also help with the steady rhythm that Frost was trying for. This structural aspect helps the reader acquire the feeling of the world that Frost wanted to portray...

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...ut how Prufrock thinks the mermaids will not sing to him. This brings the reader a sense that Prufrock has extremely low self-esteem without actually having to say it in the poem. Although this is a great way to get the reader to be more interactive with the piece, by using this method, a negative effect for the reader could occur. If the reader does not understand the references and inferences being made about the narrator, than the message that T.S. Eliot is trying to make would become completely lost.
The rhyme scheme and meter of this poem is irregular but not random. Parts of the poem may resemble free verse while other parts have bits and pieces of rhymes. the enjambment of every line couples with the end-rhymes of "pane" and "drain," "leap" and "asleep" to swell the stanza forward. Numerous other examples of the poem's "butt-ends" emerge throughout the poem.

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