The Silken Tent
Robert Frost * Track #5 On A Witness Tree
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The Silken Tent by Robert Frost
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Robert FrostAbout
“The Silken Tent” is a Shakespearean-style sonnet, published in 1942, in which Robert Frost uses an imaginative if somewhat bizarre extended metaphor or conceit. A woman who has close relationships to others is compared to a silk tent in summer breeze. Through this comparison the poet shows that th...
The Silken Tent Annotated
She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.