What do most people remember when a loved one passes away? People often reminisce about the memories they created with the individual while mourning with grief for that person. Like that, in the poem, A Late Walk by Robert Frost, a man walks to a grave, placing an aster flower over the mound of someone he once loved. Through the rhyme scheme, the setting of the poem, and the perspectives displayed throughout the poem, the narrator desires the opportunity to create more memories with his significant other.
There is a rhyme scheme in this poem. There are four pairs of rhymes, a pair in each stanza. In each rhyme pairs, one word is in the second line and the other word is in the fourth line in each stanzas. The first rhyme pair is aftermath and path, birds and words, brown and down, and blue and you. Two out of four lines rhyme which is half of each stanzas. Half of the stanzas rhyme and the other half doesn’t because it is saying that half of the married couple is alive and half isn’t which is saying that the man is alive while the woman is dead. It is also saying half, the physical part of the woman is dead, but the memories with the woman is alive.
Just like the rhyme scheme, there is a syllable pattern which half of the poem has seven syllables and the other half has nine syllables. The setting is very dark and gloomy. It is gloomy because of all the words that describes the setting. A few of the words are headless, withered, last, and faded. The colors also create a dark setting because one color is brown which is a color that is close to black, and the other color is faded blue which is fading meaning it’ll be gone. The dark and depressing setting lets the reader know that someone is dead. In the fourth line of the first stanza, it says that the garden path is closed half way. The closed half of the garden path represents the woman who is dead, and the open half of the garden path represents the man who is not yet dead.
The fourth line of the first stanza could be talking about the door to the Underworld. It can mean that if this poem is written from the dead woman’s point of view. This poem could also be about the dead woman going through the Underworld. The woman is going through the garden in the Greek Mythological Underworld. That could explain the gloomy setting.
With the poetic techniques that the narrator uses, the narrator is trying to say that even if the people you love passed away, they still think of you in another place. Try to create memories with others for memories will be the only things that last forever