by Cheryl Kottke

Created on: August 14, 2009

Robert Frost's poem "The Aim Was Song" is a myth about how man learned to make music by listening to the wind. When I first read "The Aim Was Song" it was clear Robert Frost was referring to how man learned to whistle and make music by imitating the wind's blowing.

There is not a particular speaker or place but there is a sense of time. In the first stanza, line 1 "Before man came to blow it right" we know that the poem is talking about before man learned to whistle like the wind. The entire poem is written in past tense but that is the only indication of time.

Frost creates the image of the wind's fierceness or violent blowing. He does this by using phrases like in stanza 1, line 2, "blew itself untaught" and line 3, "did its loudest day and night." He also uses "In any rough place where it caught" stanza 1, line 4, to show the wind's strength and uncontrolled blowing.

The wind is personified as a living thing in "The Aim Was Song". Man is talking to the wind in stanza 2, line 1, "Man came to tell it" and in line 4, "And listen how it ought to go!" In addition, in the fourth stanza, fourth line, he uses "the wind could see" that it's uncontrollable blowing was meant to be song. Throughout the whole poem, it is as if man is telling the wind the proper or "right" way to blow.

In the poem the wind is being told it blows too uncontrolled and in the wrong place. In the second stanza line 2, "It hadn't found the place to blow" is saying it should be taken in the mouth and blown out in a controlled "measured" way. The third stanza Frost writes "He took a little in his mouth, and held it long enough for north, to be converted into south, and then by measure blew it forth:" saying man had learned to take in air and blow it out in measures and whistle to make music. In the fourth stanza; line 1 "By measure" is repeated from the third stanza; fourth line and in the third line " A little through the lips and throat" is where the wind should blow to make song. This was the "right" place for the wind to blow according to man.

"The Aim Was Song" is written in Iambic tetrameter or quatrain with alternating rhymes. Each stanza has a different rhyme scheme (abab cdcd efef ghgh). There are four stanzas in Robert Frost's poem, each with four lines and each line has eight syllables or four iambic feet. Frost used iambic tetrameter with masculine end rhymes creating a regular rhythm like music.

Robert Frost's poem "The Aim Was Song" is a myth of how man learned from the wind to make music. The images Frost creates of the wind and its fierceness, personification, and form of the poem does create enjoyment and an n ice analogy of how man learned to whistle and make music.

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