19 pages • 38 minutes read
Robert FrostOnce by the Pacific
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1928A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Figurative Language
Generally speaking, figurative language refers to language that is not literal. Poets use figurative language to compare like (or unlike) things: This device encourages the reader to see something in terms of something else.
Personification is one example of figurative language in “Once by the Pacific.” A poet personifies an object, animal, or abstraction by ascribing it human characteristics. In Line 2, for example, the waves “looked over others coming in” —they can “see” as a human would. In the following line, they even have the capacity to think (“And thought of doing something to the shore,” Line 3). This gives the clouds human agency and capacity for malevolence. The clouds are also personified as possessing hair and eyes (Line 6); the “gleam” of their eyes suggests some evil intelligence. Finally, in Line 8, the speaker personifies the shore, describing it as “lucky.”
Frost also uses synesthesia, another type of figurative language. Synesthesia refers to the experience of one sensory event in terms of another; for example, “seeing” a musical note, or “hearing” a certain color. In “Once by the Pacific,” “misty din” is a synesthetic image. The noise made by waves (and wind, presumably) should be auditory, but Frost presents the image in visual terms. The noise is “seen” as misty, a synesthetic effect.
Repetition
Frost uses repetition of certain words and phrases to great effect in “Once by the Pacific.” He repeats Line 9’s “being backed” again in Line 10, creating a doubling effect which emphasizes the the depth and solidity of the land’s defenses against the water.
The word “cliff” at the end of Line 8 is also repeated at the beginning of Line 9. This is a poetic effect known as anadiplosis, in which the last word of a clause is repeated in the beginning of the next. Again, Frost uses it to stress the strength of the land, even as it is attacked by the water.
Another repetition occurs with the word “night” in Line 10, which is repeated in Line 11 (“and not only a night”). Here, repetition builds the tension. Frost hammers the threat home. Finally, the phrase at the end of Line 7, “It looked as if,” is repeated at the beginning of Line 10, informing the uncertainty of the speaker.
Form and Meter
“Once by the Pacific” is a sonnet; it has fourteen lines. The meter is iambic pentameter. An iamb is a poetic foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, and a pentameter comprises five feet. The meter is regular with few variations. The first foot of Line 2, “Great waves,” is a spondee, which is a foot consisting of two stressed syllables. Placing a spondee at the beginning of the line makes these words stand out against the expected metrical base, further emphasizing the size of the waves.
However, in other respects “Once by the Pacific” does not follow the traditional form of sonnet (Petrarchan or Shakespearean). Its rhyme scheme is atypical. The Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave followed by a sestet and usually rhymes abba abba cde cde, while the Shakespearean sonnet features three quatrains and a concluding couplet and uses the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg. Frost, however, forges his own path. His sonnet uses the rhyme scheme aa bb cc dd ee ff gg; that is, rhyming couplets. His rhymes are perfect rhymes and, for the most part, are “masculine” rhymes; that is, the rhyme occurs in the final stressed syllable (“skies” and “eyes,” for example, in Lines 5 and 6). Lines 13 and 14 end with an extra, unstressed syllable (a “feminine” rhyme) and a two-syllable (or double) rhyme (“broken” and “spoken”).
“Once by the Pacific” is also an innovative sonnet in its narrative structure. Generally speaking, the Petrarchan sonnet poses a situation or problem in the octave (or first stanza); this problem is resolved in the sestet (or second stanza). The Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand, usually develops a particular thought, idea, or situation in the first three quatrains (or four-line stanzas), then resolves it, often by an epigrammatic twist, in a concluding two-line couplet.
Frost bucks this structure. He often uses run-on lines, in which the grammatical construction of a phrase is not complete at the end of a line but continues into the next (he does this, for example, in the transition from Line 7 to Line 8). The reader must move quickly to the next line to fully grasp the meaning(“[…] and yet it looked as if / The shore was lucky,” Lines 7-8). Lines 10 and 11 provide another example. That being said, Frost does not overuse the effect. Most of his lines are end-stopped, meaning the end of the line coincides with the completion of a thought.
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