Ars Poetica

"The Aim Was Song" by Robert Frost

Frost was born in March of 1874. After spending the first forty years of his life unknown, he became well-known after returning from England in the midst of WWI. He ultimately won four Pulitzer Prizes before his death in January of 1963.

The Aim Was Song

Before man to blow to right
The wind once blew itself untaught,
And did its loudest day and night
In any rough place where it caught.

Man came to tell it what was wrong:
It hadn't found the place to blow;
It blew too hard -- the aim was song.
And listen -- how it ought to go!

He took a little in his mouth,
And held it long enough for north
To be converted into south,
And then by measure blew it forth.

By measure. It was word and note,
The wind the wind had meant to be --
A little through the lips and throat.
The aim was song -- the wind could see.


This poem written by Robert Frost tells the story of how song came to be. In the first stanza we learn that wind, before the influence of man, blew on its own with no boundaries whether it blew at night or during the day. The first appearance of man's influence is in the second stanza. "Man came to tell it what was wrong." By the third stanza there is a shift in how the wind works. The third stanza contains a description of how wind was turned into song. Finally, the fourth and final stanza reveals to us that the aim of the instruction given by the man was for wind to become song. In this particular poem Frost is discussing how poetry has evolved over time. He uses four stanzas with the same meter throughout to get his message across. Moreover, each of the four stanzas has a particular rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme throughout the entire poem goes as follows: abab cdcd efef ghgh. The metaphor of the wind changing over time is meant to represent how poetry changes over time. In addition, it is a perfect description of how man disrupts nature. In the poem there is no evidence that says there needed to be a change, but, with that said, man still makes a change. Also, Frost is saying that song are a form of poems, just as wind is a form of song. With a little rhythm, meter, and melody a song is formed through poetry and in the case of the poem, through wind.