Juxtaposition In Robert Frost's Taken By Surprise

The final stanza draws down from the compression and peak feeling of the previous stanza, keeping the sense of the old woman’s liveliness, however in the kinaesthetic verbs “drawing,”, “opening.” “grow”, “puts on,” “arranges” and “places.” The juxtaposition of the actual and active of the first line and the abstract “years,” or “time” as a burden and measurable, maintains blood-heat for the poem while the placing of opposites : “Grow less and less” quickens the pulse a little, as the reader returns to placid acceptance and the neat metaphor of life returned to flowering. “Taken By Surprise” leads to three other poems which all use as a sense of mystery, sudden overwhelment or strange dread. Much of the dramatic power of this poem comes from the quiet setting, a slow pacing vaguely anticipating an event under the trees of an afternoon, for half the poem, followed by a rise in tension over the next seven lines where amazement begins, until the last four lines leap wildly into the overwhelming sense of miracle. Alliteration and repetition make a strong sound …show more content…
In the same way a negative word “absence” is given presence and magnitude by comparison to “savage force” and “gentleness”, by opposition, enforces the effect of “earthquake tremor”. Jennings’ control by five-lined stanza, an almost exact rhyme scheme one feminine rhyme in the first stanza and one half rhyme: “force” and “grass” in the last breaks the totality, lines of ten syllables the feminine rhymes toppling into eleven, makes the “earthquake tremor” the more forceful, the pressure of break-through “ by my thinking of your name” the more