The Full Text of “Mowing”
1There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
2And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
3What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
4Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
5Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
6And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
7It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
8Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
9Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
10To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
11Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
12(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
13The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
14My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.
The Full Text of “Mowing”
1There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
2And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
3What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
4Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
5Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
6And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
7It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
8Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
9Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
10To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
11Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
12(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
13The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
14My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.
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“Mowing” Introduction
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"Mowing" is one of the best-known poems from Robert Frost's first collection, A Boy's Will (1913). Its speaker is a farmer mowing a field with an old-fashioned scythe (in an era before modern, mechanized lawn mowers). His scythe's "whispering" sound inspires him to imagine what the blade might be whispering—and, from there, to reflect on the larger meaning and purpose of his work. He rejects fantasies of wealth and comfort in favor of what he calls "the truth" or "The fact": the plain reality of what his work achieves. Ultimately, the poem celebrates labor (including creative as well as manual labor) done for its own sake.
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“Mowing” Summary
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The field next to the wood was always quiet except for one sound: my long-handled mowing sickle whispering through the grass. What was it whispering? I myself wasn't sure. Maybe something about how hot the sun was, or how silent the landscape was—and maybe that silence was why it had to whisper rather than making louder sounds. It wasn't whispering some promise of future idleness, or of money magically granted by an elf or fairy. Anything beyond reality would have seemed feeble to the honest, hardworking spirit that trimmed the low field, row by row—sometimes cutting fragile flowers (white orchids) as well as grass, and once scaring off a vivid green snake. Work can have no higher reward than the plain reality of what it accomplishes. My mowing sickle whispered, then left the cut grass to dry into hay.
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“Mowing” Themes
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The Value of Labor
Robert Frost's "Mowing" is a poem about labors of love (and the love of labor). Its speaker, a farmer mowing a field with an old-fashioned scythe, remarks on the tool's "whispering" sound and wonders what it might be saying. This is a figurative way of asking what sort of reward his work promises (as if in a tantalizing whisper). After rejecting visions of money and success, the speaker suggests that he does his labor for its own sake—for the "fact" of a job well done. This kind of humble satisfaction, the poem argues, is the "sweetest dream" or highest promise that work can offer.
The speaker contemplates the meaning of his work and rejects a couple of deceptive possibilities. As his scythe swishes through the grass, he playfully wonders what it's "whispering to the ground." Implicitly, he's wondering what his work means or promises in a larger sense. He confidently claims that, whatever reward his work holds, it's not some "dream of the gift of idle hours, / Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf." In other words, it doesn't promise a magical life of wealth and ease, as in a fairy tale. He's not working in order to be able to stop working someday.
Rather, the honest laborer seeks "the truth" and nothing less. The speaker seems to equate "the truth," here, with the modest, ordinary fruits of a job done well. His work emerges from "earnest love"—of the job, the natural setting, or both. The word "earnest" implies a sincerity and integrity behind the love. When one is guided by honest "love" of one's work, according to the speaker, "Anything more than the truth" seems "too weak" as a dream. The expected phrasing here would be "Anything less than the truth," but the speaker is specifically rejecting dreams that are too much—too fantastical, self-aggrandizing, and so on. Cut grass and "hay" are the true result of mowing—and that truth is enough.
In other words, the poem seems to insist that good work is its own reward. The speaker claims that "[t]he fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows." Though the statement is a little ambiguous by design, it suggests that work can have no higher goal than its own immediate output (such as the simple "fact" of hay in a fully mown field). The poem is a loving celebration of "labor" for its own sake, not for the sake of personal ambition, a comfortable retirement, or any other outside goal.
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Humanity, Nature, and Agriculture
In an indirect way, "Mowing" considers the relationship between humankind and the natural world. The speaker's labor is humbly natural in that it brings him close to the earth and helps him maintain a farm. At the same time, like all human farming (and most human activity!), it interferes with nature to some degree. Even with these qualifications, however, "Mowing" depicts rural/farm life as a state of fundamentally healthy, intimate reliance on nature.
The speaker's work puts him in an intimate and even "lov[ing]" relationship with nature. His scythe "whisper[s] to the ground," as if sharing thoughts or feelings with the earth itself. He speaks of "the earnest love that laid the swale in rows," as if his mowing is not violently chopping down the grass but tenderly laying it down on the earth. There is a fundamental "sweet[ness]" to this outdoor work, and to the poem's attitude toward such work.
At the same time, the speaker's work disrupts nature to some extent, and he acknowledges this as part of his commitment to "fact." As he mows the grass, he cuts down some pretty flowers ("Pale orchises") and scares away a "snake." Though necessary to human farming, and thus to humanity's relationship with nature, his work is somewhat disruptive to nature as well. It can cause harm or even death to creatures in the surrounding landscape.
The poem thus doesn't present rural life as a paradise free of all problems. However, it does seem to critique or rework the biblical idea of paradise (that is, the Garden or Eden myth). In particular, it counters the biblical idea of an inherent tension between nature and humanity. When Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit at the evil serpent's urging, they are expelled from the Garden of Eden, and Adam is cursed to toil on the land forever after. In the poem, by contrast, the speaker sees his farm work as a kind of blessing and actually expels a serpent himself! His life may not be idyllic, but he seems content with his labor and fate. He doesn't seem to share the biblical view of humanity as fallen from, and forever at odds with, nature.
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Art, Truth, and Realism
"Mowing" can be read not only as a celebration of labor in general but as a kind of allegory about artistic labor in particular. In some respects, it's a poem about poetry, and about the kind of aspiration art and poetry might have. The speaker's celebration of simple "fact" over wilder "dream[s]," and of work well done over idle wealth, implies a preference for realism over romantic and materialist attitudes. In other words, the speaker—read as a stand-in for the poet—isn't doing his work for money and success; he's doing it for its own sake and the sake of "truth." This, the poem suggests, is the right attitude for artists to adopt.
Like many Robert Frost poems, "Mowing" seems to play on Frost's dual role as a poet and working farmer. Though the jobs are very different, the poem finds common ground between the two. The speaker's mowing is the only "sound" in the landscape, so he's having a kind of solitary communion with nature—in the way poets, stereotypically, often do. In fact, he imagines that the scythe sound might be commenting on the surrounding atmosphere (the "heat") and breaking the landscape's silence ("lack of sound"). He playfully suggests that the silence might have been "why" the scythe "whispered and did not speak"—perhaps a sly acknowledgement that the poet's way of communicating is different from, and subtler than, ordinary speech.
Having established a parallel between mowing and art/poetry, he extends the parallel in order to evoke his particular worldview as a poet. Specifically, he rejects both romanticism and materialism (the "dream of the gift of idle hours" and of "easy gold at the hand of fay or elf") in favor of hard-nosed realism ("truth" and "fact"). He implies that the truth value of art far outweighs any material value it might have. As part of this realistic outlook, he acknowledges (via symbolism) the costs and flaws of the artist's work. He admits that, while mowing, he cut down some pale, beautiful "flowers" and "scared a bright green snake." Similarly, art doesn't just create beauty and nourishment; it can also disturb, frighten, and even wound.
The poem ends with the word "make," as in "left the hay to make." This word again hints that the poem is about creative making more broadly, and perhaps about the poet's kind of making in particular. (The term "poet" comes from the ancient Greek word for "maker," as Frost knew!) In Frost's rural slang, leaving hay to "make" means leaving grass out in the sun to dry into hay. Metaphorically, then, "le[aving] the hay to make" might mean leaving the poem to do its work once the poet is finished with his. That is, the finished poem goes on "mak[ing]"—having an impact on the world, influencing others, etc.—long after its apparent completion.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Mowing”
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Lines 1-3
There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;"Mowing" begins with a simple setting and concrete imagery—but quickly shifts into a more abstract, metaphorical realm.
The title announces that the poem is about the ordinary chore of "Mowing." In lines 1-2, the speaker introduces himself as someone who once did this chore regularly. Since the poem dates from the early 1900s—before the widespread use of modern, gas-powered mowers—the speaker did the job with an old-fashioned hand tool: a "scythe." (Non-motorized push mowers, steam-powered mowers, etc. were introduced in the mid-1800s, but scythes were still in common use for many decades after—for example, to clear tall grass in advance of these other tools. In some rural parts of the world, scythes are still used today.) Ultimately, the poem explains that the speaker cut the grass to make "hay"—livestock feed—implying that he's a farmer or farm worker.
The speaker used a "long scythe": one whose curved cutting blade is attached to a long handle, meant to be swung with two hands. When the speaker mowed, he worked in a field beside a "wood," and the swish of his scythe blade made the only sound within earshot: "There was never a sound beside the wood but one, / And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground." Notice how these lines are full of soft /s/ and /w/ consonance, mimicking the "whispering" of the scythe itself:
There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.This type of consonance and alliteration will continue throughout "Mowing," reinforcing the poem's imagery through the sound of its lines.
The speaker then poses a playful rhetorical question about the scythe:
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
In other words, if the blade was whispering through the grass, what was it saying? The speaker confesses that he doesn't know the answer "[him]self." And, of course, the question is impossible to answer on the literal level: the scythe wasn't actually saying anything to the ground. But the speaker takes this playful conceit and runs with it, personifying the scythe and imagining what it would be saying if it could speak. As the poem goes on, this conceit becomes a way of discussing the larger meaning of the speaker's work—as a farmer and perhaps as a writer, too.
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Lines 4-6
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak. -
Lines 7-8
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: -
Lines 9-10
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, -
Lines 11-12
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. -
Lines 13-14
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.
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“Mowing” Symbols
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The Scythe
On the literal level, the speaker's "scythe" is a farming implement with a handle and curved blade, used for cutting grass and reaping crops. But scythes carry some traditional symbolism, too. They're associated with harvesting the fruits of one's work in a more general sense; they're also associated with death, as in the traditional figure of the Grim Reaper (who carries a scythe or sickle).
Here, both meanings are relevant. The speaker's work can be taken as representative of human labor in general and possibly as an allegory or extended metaphor for the writer's work in particular. It's honest, productive, and nourishing work: the scythe cuts down grass to make "hay," which will feed livestock and keep the farm going. But the scythe also has a destructive side, as lines 10-12 make clear: it cuts down delicate flowers as well as grass, and scares away a snake. By extension, human labor is sustaining for humans and the animals we rely on, but can be deadly to other natural creatures. Applied more metaphorically to writing, such work often sustains writers (and readers), but can also have a psychological cost or cause various kinds of hurt.
(It's worth noting here that the speaker inadvertently cuts down "orchises," whose name comes from the ancient Greek word for "testicles." If this is a deliberate double entendre, there's some impotence symbolism here—a suggestion that work, or the writer's work specifically, simultaneously nourishes us and drains our powers.)
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The Flowers and Snake
As the speaker mows the field, he doesn't just cut down grass: he also inadvertently cuts down some "flowers" (specifically, "orchises") and "scare[s] a bright green snake." Symbolically, these details seem to represent side effects or unintended consequences of the speaker's work—or, more broadly, of the poet's work.
The cutting down of flowers highlights that the work, though productive, has a destructive element. (Compare the expression "You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.") If the speaker "la[ying] the swale in rows" is meant to parallel, say, the poet laying down lines one by one, the flowers might represent a kind of natural beauty that gets both caught and altered in this artistic process.
The scaring of the snake might symbolize poetry's power to disturb or frighten. Since snakes are traditional symbols of evil (most famously in the biblical Garden of Eden myth), this moment might also represent poetry's power to chase away evil and injustice. The poet's or artist's work might even make the world a bit more like a paradise.
Ultimately, the symbolism here can be read in many ways. Human labor in general—and artistic labor in particular—can capture good things and drive off bad; it can also be unsettling, disruptive, or even dangerous. Regardless, it alters the world around it.
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“Mowing” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Robert Frost was a master of matching sound to sense in his poems. It's no surprise, then, that this poem about "sound" (a word it mentions twice!) contains alliteration that reinforces its meaning.
In particular, the poem is full of /s/ and /w/ words throughout. Look at how many crowd the first six lines alone:
There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.These soft, sibilant /s/ sounds and liquid /w/ sounds mimic the "whispering" of the scythe itself. (Notice that the words "whispering" and "whispered" also contain /s/ consonance in the middle; they could be considered onomatopoeia words.) In effect, the whole poem takes on the sound of the scythe.
Other alliterative phrases crop up, too, as in lines 10-11:
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers [...]Here, the repetitive sounds might evoke the scythe's repetitive movement as the speaker mows or "la[ys]" the grass down, as well as the recurring sight of "flowers" along the way. However, there's not always a neat and clear match between alliteration and meaning. More generally, the device gives the poem a pleasing "sweet[ness]" (see line 13)—a hushed, lyrical quality that fits its celebration of the speaker's quiet work.
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End-Stopped Line
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Personification
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Repetition
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Rhetorical Question
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"Mowing" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Scythe
- Idle
- Fay
- Swale
- Feeble-pointed
- Orchises
- Make
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An old-fashioned mowing or reaping implement consisting of a curved blade attached to a handle.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Mowing”
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Form
"Mowing" is a one-stanza sonnet, though a somewhat unconventional one. Like traditional sonnets, it has 14 rhyming lines (as well as a significant "turn" or rhetorical shift in line 9). Unlike traditional sonnets, it uses a fairly loose, accentual meter, and it doesn't follow any of the standard rhyme schemes associated with the form.
The syllable count per line varies quite a bit, but each line contains five or six stressed (accented) syllables. Meanwhile, each line has a rhyming pair, but the rhymes don't fall in any kind of predictable order (unlike in, say, the Shakespearean sonnet, where the rhyme scheme is always ABAB CDCD EFEF GG). In other words, the form is a little rough and shaggy—appropriate, perhaps, for a poem about mowing an overgrown field. The roughness also has an informal quality that suits the humble, unpretentious setting.
The sonnet form is conventionally associated with love, romance, heartbreak, etc., and Frost certainly plays with that convention here. This isn't a poem for a human love interest, but it's about "earnest love" (line 10): love of the "truth," of one's work, and perhaps of one's landscape as well.
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Meter
Unusually for a sonnet, "Mowing" uses a version of accentual meter. This means that the syllable count per line varies, but each line contains about the same number of stressed (accented) syllables. Here, every line in the poem contains either five or six strong stresses. Compare lines 1-4, for example:
There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,A few lines in the poem follow a pattern close to iambic pentameter or iambic hexameter. That is, they have five or six iambic feet (two-syllable metrical units with a da-DUM rhythm).
Even in these cases, there's some variation, however. For example, line 3 above is basically iambic pentameter, but it contains a variation in the second and third foot ("it it" is best scanned as a pyrrhic, two unstressed syllables, while "whispered" is a trochee, meaning it goes DA-dum):
What was | it it | whispered? | I knew | not well | myself;
Overall, the poem has a pleasing, organic rhythm, even if it gets a little rough and untidy here and there. In that way, it seems aligned with the untidy, yet pleasant natural setting: the shaggy "swale" the farmer is mowing.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Mowing" is a sonnet with an unconventional rhyme scheme: ABCABDECDFEGFG. In fact, it doesn't really have a scheme at all; each line has a rhyming pair, but the pairs don't occur in any kind of regular pattern. (Compare it to the fixed scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.)
Like the loose meter, this loose rhyme patterning might be meant to reflect the roughness and shagginess of the setting (the farmer's overgrown field). It might also reflect Frost's sensibilities as a member of the early 20th-century modernist generation. Because Frost avoided and disliked free verse, he is sometimes thought of as less experimental than other modernists, or categorized as something other than a modernist. But he often experimented playfully within the bounds of rhyme and meter, and "Mowing" (published during the first major decade of modernism) showcases this tendency.
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“Mowing” Speaker
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The speaker is a farmer mowing a field (a low-lying "swale") with an old-fashioned "scythe." (The poem was published in 1913, before the advent of modern, mechanized lawn mowers.) His occupation is never explicitly mentioned, but the fact that he leaves the cut grass to dry into "hay" (line 14) suggests that he has livestock to feed.
His gender is never mentioned, either, but at the time Frost was writing, divisions of labor were more heavily gendered, and this kind of mowing would typically (though not always) have been considered men's work. There is also some reason to identify the speaker with Frost himself: for a time in his early adulthood, Frost was a working farmer as well as a writer, and his poetry often drew on the sights, sounds, and chores of traditional New England farms.
The farming life was often frustrating for Frost, and he eventually gave it up—first for teaching and then for a full-time literary career. The speaker, however, expresses an "earnest love" for this kind of traditional "labor."
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“Mowing” Setting
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The setting is a grassy field—specifically, a "swale" or low-lying area—that the speaker is mowing. This swale is located "beside [a] wood," and the speaker is mowing on a hot, quiet day. (He mentions the "heat of the sun" and the "lack of sound.")
The word farm is never mentioned, but it's implied that the speaker is a farmer. He's not mowing for landscaping purposes but to make "hay"—dried grass to be used as livestock feed. The grass he's mowing contains some other living creatures, too, including "orchises" (spiked flowers in the orchid family) and a "bright green snake."
Finally, the speaker is mowing with an old-fashioned "scythe" rather than more modern implements: a reminder of the poem's historical period. (Frost published it during the 1910s, when he was a farmer himself.)
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Literary and Historical Context of “Mowing”
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Literary Context
"Mowing" appears in Robert Frost's debut volume, A Boy's Will, published in the UK in 1913 and in the U.S. in 1915. This collection also contains a number of other well-respected early Frost poems, such as "Into My Own," "My November Guest," and "The Tuft of Flowers." The book's title alludes to "My Lost Youth" by famed New England poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which includes the lines:
A boy's will is the wind's will
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.According to Frost, A Boy’s Will is highly autobiographical; the poems in the book more or less cover a period of five years in the poet's life in which he retreated from society and later found his way back. The collection's broader themes include humanity's relationship to the natural world, rural life, philosophy, and individuality—all of which are themes that Frost would return to again and again throughout his life. These themes also link Frost with other New England poets such as Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Wordsworth.
Frost's poetry rather uniquely straddles the line between the traditions of 19th-century American poetry and the experimentation of 20th-century Modernism. Compared to the very deliberate departures from traditional forms and techniques that his contemporaries (such as T. S. Eliot) were making, Frost was not particularly interested in innovation for innovation's sake. While many poets in the aftermath of the First World War were breaking away from formal restrictions, Frost typically used more conventional meter and rhyme. At the same time, he used frank, contemporary language that tied his work in some ways to the Imagist poets.
Frost himself consistently shied away from associating with any one school of writing. Instead, his work incorporates a variety of traditions and techniques while remaining highly accessible to average readers. By the end of his career, he was the most recognized American poet of his time, having earned four Pulitzer Prizes and a Congressional Gold Medal.
Historical Context
Though he lived through both World War I and II and saw many significant social and political shifts in his lifetime, Frost hardly ever wrote directly about history or politics. Instead, Frost's poetry is known for dealing with rural New England life and identity. Frost lived and worked on a New Hampshire farm from 1900-1912, and his interest in rural life, nature, and New England reflects his time working the land in what he considered the best part of America.
In "Mowing," for example, the speaker (likely a stand-in for the poet) seems to be a farmer cutting grass to make "hay." He's mowing a low-lying field or "swale" beside a wood, using an old-fashioned "scythe" (a hand tool with a long, curved blade). Non-motorized push mowers had been around since the mid-1800s, but gas-powered mowers had hit the market only about a decade before Frost's poem was published, and scythes were still common mowing tools for farmers in rural regions.
Frost's work is known for its realism, particularly as it pertains to the difficulties of rural life and the indifference of nature. Like many poets of his time, Frost had a somewhat pessimistic view of the modern world, which was perhaps intensified by his own significant personal losses. His father died of tuberculosis when he was only 11, leaving behind eight dollars for the family to survive on. His mother died of cancer five years later, in 1900, and in 1920 his younger sister was committed to a mental hospital, where she later died. Mental illness plagued his family, and both Frost and his wife struggled with depression.
Despite or because of these personal trials, Frost wrote diligently of individuals searching for meaning and finding—most often in nature—some kind of mirror for their own situations. His poems tend to highlight ordinary moments in which extraordinary or profound insights occur. Their plainspoken, yet often symbolic and ambiguous, language allows for multiple interpretations ("The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," two of his most famous poems, are perfect examples).
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More “Mowing” Resources
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External Resources
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"A Boy's Will" — Browse the first U.S. edition (complete with author signature!) of the collection in which "Mowing" appears.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to Robert Frost read "Mowing."
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The Poet's Life and Work — A biography of Robert Frost at the Poetry Foundation.
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A Frost Documentary — Watch a short film about Frost's life and career.
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Interview with the Poet — A 1952 NBC interview with Robert Frost.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Frost
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