Context:
– Frost moves with his family to England engaging in many new acquaintances with well-known poets and writers
– gathers inspirations from his new environment and the people he met

Literally:
A man visits an old devastated house, dwelling in melancholy thinking about his childhood he spends at that house. The power of nature is shown by it taking back what once belonged them, the sun is shining through to the cellar and the pavement to the well is covered by natures parts. Two gravestones in the garden suggest the age of the house, after the narrator moved out of it two people have spent their whole life living in the house, even their death seems to be fare gone.

Analysis:
– Rhyme Scheme: AABBA
Two lines per stanza are isolated from the rest of the stanza, looking at the first stanza the lines are regarding his memory whereas the ones surrounding him describe the house and his environment. It describes the power nature has in retrieving the house.

– Natures power and strength
Through the whole poem nature is described as beautiful and powerful, it is taking back everything the humans took from it. Even its oldest part it is constantly renewing (l.9: woodpecker chopping on the old wood). Line 10, talking about the footpath being healed, supports the argument of nature being good. The purple stemmed wild raspberries suggest how majestic nature is, seeing as purple is the colour of majesty. Even in darkness, nature finds something beautiful and joyful (line 15: bats tumble and dart).
This resemblance of nature as healing and renewing contrasts with the resemblance of the narrator.

– Contrast: isolation/loneliness vs. renewing
The man is presented as desperate, he is thinking back to his childhood. The house reminds him that is life is finite, recognizing his advanced age makes this scene more depressive. The two gravestones give another edge to it, the names are covered by nature’s most, suggesting that the reader and the narrator do not know these people, this is also the only stanza consisting of only a singular line. Every human will be forgotten one day because the world and especially nature moves on. Everything old is being renewed and can no longer be seen after nature is done with it. The two gravestones being covered in mose also suggest that people have stopped to come to those stones, people close to them, possibly family have forgotten them. Once all of our close family and friends, all the people that knew us are gone, who is there to remember us. This leads to the urge of wanting to be remembered, accomplishing great things in our lifetime in order to be recognized for centuries ahead, but eventually, even this legacy will fade. Nature has accepted death and is doing it most with it, trying to create something new with it whilst the narrator is stuck, not being able to move one with the same easy feeling as nature is. All of the loneliness and isolation he is feeling comes from him holding on to the past.

Resistant read:
– The dead couple is not gendered meaning the generalisation of us all facing the same fate
– Nature is clearly on top of the power structure, no matter what humans create nature will end up destroying it to create something new and lasting