I love Robert Frost’s poems. This one is about the importance of friendship.
A Time to Talk by Robert Frost
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
In this short poem, we are reminded of the need to make time to talk to friends, to sometimes ignore work and focus on communication and being with another person. There’s none of the irony one often finds in Frost. Instead, the brevity and even triviality of the poem is a minor celebration of those moments in a day full of activity when one just slows down and indulges in friendly conversation.
There’s a strong sense of the New England countryside that Frost made so memorable in his poetry. It’s a farm setting, with a horse, hills in the distance, the hoe stuck into the ground and a stone wall (the wall he wrote about so powerfully in his fabulous poem Mending Wall. I have been lucky enough to visit the Robert Frost farm in New Hampshire, so I can picture the farm vividly, but even without knowing the place, he makes it easy for the reader to visualise the backdrop which is entwined skilfully within the topic of the poem. We need to be there for our friends and talk to them!
We live in an increasingly busy world, with people communicating on phones and computers, but sometimes we do need to make time for face-to-face conversation and the “friendly visit” that Frost writers about in the last line of the poem.
You can listen to this poem here:
Have you enjoyed this poem? I’d love to know what you think, let me know by leaving a comment.
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Mrs Jane Smith
Timely. Thank you.
Susannah Fullerton
I am glad you enjoyed the poem.