The Depths of Hurt in "Home Burial"

"Home Burial" is a long narrative poem told in Robert Frost's conversational, very free blank verse. This means that the general structure of the lines is unrhymed iambic pentameter -- the same meter that much of Shakespeare's work is written in -- which classically consists of five pairs of alternately stressed syllables, with the stress on the second syllable of each pair; a pure example would be the second line of this poem, "BeFORE/ she …

…wife is still preparing to leave, and the husband has returned to the threatening mode with which he began the poem. "Home Burial", whose title reflects not only the baby's literal burial but the burial of so much passion and feeling, does not have a happy ending after all. Source of Poem: Frost, Robert. "Home Burial", from The Poetry of Robert Frost, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, NY, <Tab/>1969, p. 51-55.