I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Track 21 on West-Running Brook
About Acquainted with the Night
“Acquainted With the Night” was published in 1928 in Frost’s collection West-Running Brook. Like a sonnet, it contains 14 lines, but it follows the terza rima (ABA BCB CDC DAD AA) rhyme scheme most closely associated with Dante’s Divine Comedy. The tightly interlocking scheme conveys both hellishness and a kind of mechanistic inevitability: the speaker is compelled to walk out and back again as if by inner forces he can’t control.
