Poetry Xtras » "The Silken Tent" by Robert Frost

The central conceit that the tent and woman appear to be one thing (free) but are, in fact, another (bound) is perfectly mirrored in the structure. The poem is on one level a Shakespearean sonnet, but is also an Italian sonnet. The rhyme scheme makes it appear to be a Shakespearean sonnet. Looked at more carefully, though, Frost has structured the lines into an Italian sonnet. The first eight lines spin out one idea: that she is free, The turn occurs with "But" at the beginning of the ninth line, as in an Italian sonnet, and spins out the idea that she is, in fact, bound. Though rhyming like a Shakespearean sonnet (a quatrain followed by a couplet), the last six lines are broken into two triplets, like an Italian sonnet. Pretty cool. The poem appears to be an English sonnet while it is also an Italian sonnet, just as the woman/tent appear to be free but are really bound. The poem's structural duality perfectly mirrors the thematic duality. Frost wrote about two dozen sonnets and all of them in some way play with the form: using it while twisting it in interesting ways.

Frost employs an extended metaphor to compare a woman's freedom and sense of self with a silken tent in a field in summer.

Like the tent, a woman also has a strong support inside of her (her soul, or spirit), has constraints on her freedom in much the same way the guy ropes would hold the silken tent in place.

The poet used a metaphor to engage the reader in his topic. Poems are most successful when they can immerse the reader in a physical experience; with something that can be experienced through the senses, rather than simply understood rationally. In writing about something that is not concrete (a woman's freedom) the poet can address his thematic and aesthetic concerns more directly by using imagery from the physical world to describe something abstract.

The Silken Tent is a sonnet written in one sentence. All fourteen lines are a single extended metaphor expressed in one sentence so that his metaphor forms the poem. Essentially a love poem, "TST" illustrates the woman's steadfastness by comparing her to a tent standing in a field. The poem's brilliance is revealed in the successful way Frost treats a difficult subject: how a woman can be bound to one love and yet maintain her freedom.

The tent metaphor works perfectly, for the poet knows that we have all seen a tent sway with a breeze. With the center pole hidden, it seems to stand alone, in total freedom, until the sway causes the guy ropes to exert gentle pressure, and we realize that the tent is free within the limits of its definition.

The center pole which provides direction for the tent is a metaphor for the woman's soul. Were it not for her soul, life's circumstances as well as her own feminine nature, both suggested by the capricious breeze, might weaken her ties of love. Although she is not "strictly held", she is like the tent "loosely bound" with countless ties that are revealed when capriciousness calls pressure into play.

Although the poem is one extended metaphor, the metaphorical expression is composed of several levels that contribute to the whole. The woman is a silken tent, silken to suggest femininity as opposed to the rough canvas of most tents. The "ties of love and thought" are the guy ropes: the soul is the center pole: and the shims of personality are the capricious breezes that cause the tent to sway, consequently calling attention to the pole and guys. The metaphor's various levels mesh to compose a perfect lyric.

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from "Robert Frost's Dark Woods and the Function of Metaphor". Frost Centennial Essays. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 1974.

The octave falls evenly into two quatrains which establish two separate analogies.

(That is the first 8 lines (octave) breaks into 2 quatrains (4 lines each).

Note there is one analogy in the first 4 lines, and then another in the second 4 lines.) Then the sestet moves quietly into less obvious analogies which create a cumulative tension, and that tension reaches its climax only with the last word of the last line. The analogies in the octave prepare for the symbolism developed in the sestet. But the capricious gust of wind, testing the "bondage," immediately suggests the paradoxical contrast between the established pattern of the woman's virtuous life and the unexpectedly impulsive response to a gust of passionate desire. And the conflict brings into new consciousness the hitherto casual "bondage" of those "countless silken ties of love and thought" which sustain her.

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Fire and Ice: The Art and Through of Robert Frost. New York: Russell and Russell, 1961.