🌈Poem 4
📘A Roadside Stand
✍️Poet: Robert Frost
📌 About the Poet:
Robert Frost (1874–1963) was one of the most celebrated American poets. His poems are known for their deep themes, rural imagery, and philosophical insights. He often wrote about the lives of ordinary people and the landscapes of New England. In “A Roadside Stand,” Frost portrays the pain and struggles of poor rural folk who yearn for attention and justice from a modern, selfish society.
💫 Central Idea:
The poem criticizes social inequality and the neglect of rural people by the urban rich and politicians. Through the image of a simple roadside stand, Frost highlights the exploitation and false promises made to the poor.
📝 Stanza-Wise Explanation with Lines:
🌻 Stanza 1:
The little old house was out with a little new shed
In front at the edge of the road where the traffic sped,
A roadside stand that too pathetically pled,
It would not be fair to say for a dole of bread,
But for some of the money, the cash, whose flow supports
The flower of cities from sinking and withering faint.
🔎 Explanation:
The poet describes a small old house with a newly built shed by the roadside. It was set up as a shop where poor people hoped to sell goods to passing vehicles. Their request was not begging for food, but a dignified attempt to earn some money—the same money that sustains the prosperity of cities.
🌻Stanza 2:
The polished traffic passed with a mind ahead,
Or if ever aside a moment, then out of sorts
At having the landscape marred with the artless paint
Of signs that with N turned wrong and S turned wrong
Offered for sale wild berries in wooden quarts,
Or crook-necked golden squash with silver warts,
Or beauty rest in a beautiful mountain scene,
You have the money, but if you want to be mean,
Why keep your money (this crossly) and go along.
🔎 Explanation:
The poet laments how the cars just rush past, their drivers thinking only of their destination. If they do notice the stand, they are annoyed at its crude, poorly painted signs (with letters written wrongly). These signs advertise local produce—like berries and vegetables—and offer rest in a peaceful mountain setting. The poor wish to earn money honestly, but if the city people don't want to help, they should just leave without adding insult.
🌻 Stanza 3:
The hurt to the scenery wouldn’t be my complaint
So much as the trusting sorrow of what is unsaid:
Here far from the city we make our roadside stand
And ask for some city money to feel in the hand
To try if it will not make our being expand,
And give us the life of the moving-pictures’ promise
That the party in power is said to be keeping from us.
🔎 Explanation:
Frost clarifies that he is not criticizing the shed for spoiling the beauty of the landscape. His real sorrow lies in the unspoken pain of the poor, who hope to earn some money from city people. They believe that this money might help them live the glamorous life shown in movies—a life they are falsely promised by politicians.
🌻 Stanza 4:
It is in the news that all these pitiful kin
Are to be bought out and mercifully gathered in
To live in villages, next to the theater and the store,
Where they won’t have to think for themselves anymore,
While greedy good-doers, beneficent beasts of prey,
Swarm over their lives enforcing benefits
That are calculated to soothe them out of their wits,
And by teaching them how to sleep they sleep all day,
Destroy their sleeping at night the ancient way.
🔎 Explanation:
The poet sarcastically refers to government plans to relocate the poor to model villages with theaters and stores. These “good-doers” are actually greedy people who pretend to help but actually exploit the poor. Their so-called help takes away the independence of the villagers, making them passive and dependent, destroying their traditional way of life and even their natural rhythms of living.
🌻 Stanza 5:
Sometimes I feel myself I can hardly bear
The thought of so much childish longing in vain,
The sadness that lurks near the open window there,
That waits all day in almost open prayer
For the squeal of brakes, the sound of a stopping car,
Of all the thousand selfish cars that pass,
Just one to inquire what a farmer’s prices are.
🔎 Explanation:
The poet expresses deep sorrow at the hopeful yet vain longing of the poor villagers. All day, they wait by the window, hoping a car will stop. But among the thousands that pass by selfishly, rarely does even one stop to ask about the prices of their goods.
🌻 Stanza 6:
And one did stop, but only to plow up grass
In using the yard to back and turn around;
And another to ask the way to where it was bound;
And another to ask could they sell it a gallon of gas
They couldn’t (this crossly), they had none, didn’t it see?
🔎 Explanation:
Sometimes a car does stop, but not to buy anything. One stops just to turn around, another to ask for directions, and another to buy fuel—which the poor stand owners don’t even have. The speaker conveys their frustration at these false hopes.
🌻 Final Lines:
No, in country money, the country scale of gain,
The requisite lift of spirit has never been found.
Or so the voice of the country seems to complain,
I can’t help owning the great relief it would be
To put these people at one stroke out of their pain.
And then next day as I come back into the sane,
I wonder how I should like you to come to me
And offer to put me gently out of my pain.
🔎 Explanation:
The speaker concludes that rural poverty continues because the scale of development and money never truly uplifts the spirit of these people. In a moment of despair, he imagines it would be a mercy to end their suffering altogether—but then quickly realizes the cruelty of such a thought. He reflects on how he would feel if someone suggested the same for him.
🎯 Themes:
🧠 Poetic Devices:
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Imagery: “wild berries in wooden quarts,” “crook-necked golden squash”
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Irony: “greedy good-doers,” “beneficent beasts of prey”
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Personification: “the sadness that lurks near the open window”
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Alliteration: “polished traffic passed”
