Acquainted with the Night

"Acquainted with the Night" is a poem by Robert Frost. It first appeared in the Autumn 1928 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review and was republished later that year in his poetry collection West-Running Brook. ^[1]

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

The poem is written in strict iambic pentameter, with 14 lines like a sonnet, but with a terza rima rhyme scheme which follows the complex pattern of: ABA BCB CDC DAD AA. An earlier example of the measure's adaptation to the sonnet form is found in Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind".^[2]

The poem first appeared in the Autumn 1928 issue of The Virginia Quarterly Review, edited by James Southall Wilson.^[3] It was republished that year by Henry Holt and Company in the poetry collection West-Running Brook.^[4]

• Nancy Lewis Tuten; John Zubizarreta (2001). The Robert Frost Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-29464-8.
• Jay Parini (2000). Robert Frost: A Life. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-8050-6341-7.
• Jeffrey Meyers (1996). Robert Frost: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-3958-5603-1.

• Text of the poem
• Excerpt from a close reading of "Acquainted with the Night"