Robert Frost was a famous American poet well known for his richly detailed philosophical poems. Frost's poem “To Earthward” was published in 1923 and illustrates the naivety and sweetness of a past love and how as one grows older such a love will be desired again. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayIn "To Earthward" by Robert Frost, the speaker traces a youthful romance and describes it as all-consuming, before moving on to the present and how life has changed. Through the inclusion of diction, figurative language, and his comparisons to nature and the past, the speaker makes his message resonate with the reader. In "To Earthward", Frost included a series of four stanzas in which a speaker reflected on a past love. The first verse is rich in imagery and includes the line, “Love on the lips was touch / Sweet as I could bear.” This phrase evokes the image of kissing without using the word itself; the speaker's youthful romance centered on sweet kisses. The speaker then invokes the image of infatuated love with the lines, "And once it seemed too much; / I lived on air." When the couple wasn't kissing, simply being in each other's presence was enough to keep them content, and breathing the same air was as sweet as the many kisses they shared. The first stanza of the poem uses imagery to illustrate a young couple in love and emphasizes that the simple act of breathing together was enough for them to be satisfied. Frost's second and third stanzas include the speaker's memory of himself and a lover in a meadow. The speaker recounts an experience, “Descent into Sunset,” that made him “swirl and ache.” The inclusion of this wording alludes to a feeling of dizziness; the speaker took his lover to watch the sunset, and her giddiness surely resulted from the combination of sweet-smelling flowers and his blissful love. The sweet scent came: “From honeysuckle twigs, which when gathered tremble, dew on the knuckles.” While in the meadow, the speaker gathered honeysuckles for his lover, and they left the dew of the cool twilight air on his hands. The syntax of the speaker in these lines ends the stanza with a rhyme, continuing the pattern of the previous stanzas. The diction and syntax included in the second and third stanzas indicate a dreamy feeling, reflecting the speaker's giddiness and feelings towards his lover. Frost's fourth stanza is the last one that reflects on the past, and symbols of sweets and roses are included to depict him as young love. The speaker states that, “I longed for strong sweets, but those / Seemed strong when I was young.” He refers to his inexperience as a young man; Now that he's older, he realizes that his love, in the beginning, was pure and untainted by reality. She thought her love could conquer anything, but now she realizes that maintaining a relationship takes work. He goes on to state that “The petal of the rose / Was so stung.” The speaker touches on the fact that love is often bittersweet. Reality caught up with him and his rose petal, a symbol of his lover, finally caused him pain. His innocent love turned out not to be as steadfast as he thought. The last four stanzas bring the reader back to the present, and once again there is a change in diction. In the fifth and sixth stanzas, the speaker is now in a relationship that has no spark, and instead of using the word sweet to describe his encounters, he now uses the word “Salt.” His current encounters have “no joy” and leave him tormented by “tiredness”. Although his first love caused him great pain, he also received great pain from her.