The rime scheme of Frost’s “A Soldier” is a variation on the English sonnet, ABBA CDDC EFFE GG; it can be sectioned into three stanzas and a rimed couplet, as the English sonnet is, or it can be divided into the octave and sestet, as is the Italian sonnet.
The function of the octave presents a claim about the subject, while the sestet offers further explanation; therefore, the function of the Italian octave and sestet works in the sonnet. Yet if sectioned into quatrains and couplet, the sections function equally as smoothly.
Octave: First and Second Quatrains
The speaker begins his drama by likening metaphorically the “fallen soldier” to a lance that has been “hurled.” The lance is lying on the ground, and no one retrieves it. It, therefore, is allowed to gather “dew” and “rust.” But still the lance points to a target. The dead soldier, although gone, still represents the goal for which he died, as the lance still points to some direction as it lies still on the dirt.
The speaker then draws the reader’s attention to those for whom the soldier has died, and claims, “If we who sight along it round the world, / See nothing worthy to have been its mark.” The speaker assumes that it is difficult for many citizens to understand the purpose of the death of soldier, so he is going to explain why that difficulty exists: “It is because like men we look too near, / Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere, / Our missiles always make too short an arc.”
Many ordinary citizens cannot see the bigger picture in the cosmic scheme of things: they “look too near.” Using the same dramatic metaphor of the lance, the speaker evaluates the average citizen’s ability to grasp the life and death issues that nations have to face. They throw their lances, and they can never throw them far enough. They look at the world through stunted lenses.
Sestet: Third Quatrain and Couplet
Continuing the lance hurling metaphor, the speaker dramatizes the shortness of imagination and vision by asserting, “They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect / The curve of earth, and striking, break their own.” The paltry imagination and lack of foresight make smug citizens think only in terms of selfish, immediate aims.
They fail to realize that soldiers do their work out of a sense of duty and mission just as others make sacrifices in their professions. Soldiers are professionals, not merely pawns in a chess game of politicians, as the ignorant are fond of portraying them.
In the couplet, the speaker makes an insightful observation that as the soul of the dying soldier leaves the body, it soars beyond any “target ever showed or shone.” The soul of the soldier who dies in service to his country is like a hurled lance that does not meet an impediment but continues into the spiritual sphere where it finds its true home.
Source:
- Robert Frost, "A Soldier," internal.org.
Linda Sue Grimes - As a writer, researcher, and SRF devotee, Linda Sue Grimes has studied poetry and practiced Kriya Yoga for over thirty years..
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