Explication of Bereft by Robert Frost

     The first thing I noticed about the poem Bereft, by Robert Frost was the rhyme scheme. It looks something like this: AAAAABBACCDDDEDDE. I don't know what poem this qualifies as but this is something unusual and interesting. Robert Frost gives the wind and it's actions animalistic qualities and even personifies. The wind blowing through a pile of leaves is compared to a snake, "Leaves got up in a coil and hissed, Blindly struck at my knee and missed". The wind is described early in the play like a lion, "Change like this to a deeper roar". This imagery can even make the reader recognize and hear the strong and vicious wind; it is not just a brisk breeze. When commenting on the auditory aspects of the wind, he says "Something sinister in the tone/Told me my secret must be known". There is personification in giving the wind a personality that is somewhat malicious.
     I looked up the word "bereft" and dictionary.com told me that it could mean "suffering the death of a loved one, bereaved". At the end of the poem Frost says, "Word I was in my life alone, Word I have no one left but God". There must have been a death and the wind is the symbolic of the messenger delivering that awfully painful message. This poem carries similarities to King Lear in the fact that both pieces of writing believe in the fact that nature carries messages. In King Lear and in this poem, the nature is not peaceful and romantic, it is vengeful and ferocious. Frost says in the first line of the poem, "Where had I heard this wind before". This implies to the reader that this is not the speaker's first time dealing with a death, which is where this somber tone begins.