“October” by Robert Frost is a short poem about how brief the season of autumn seems and how the speaker wishes to slow the time down. The leaves are falling, the days are progressively getting shorter, and the first frost of the year has already plagued the land. There is a lot to be said about Frost's poetry generally, “which often seems deceptively clear on its surface but also more complex upon reflection” (Ferlazzo 226). I do not think the speaker in the poem is just praying “for the grapes sake along the wall” (Line 21) but for himself, to give his life more time, as he sees that time slows down for nothing.
A Boys Will (1913), this is where the poem “October” was originally published. Frost’s poetry is filled with imagery about nature; his favorite season to write about was autumn. I chose “October” to analyze because it is a good example of Frost’s poetry style as a whole. “Many of Robert Frost's poems center around nature, for example “The Road Not Taken” and “Nature's First Green is Gold”. He was often inspired by nature to write poems that used nature as a theme to express various ideas, in our examples “The Road Not Taken” is about making choices in life, whereas the poem about “Nature's First Green is Gold” hints at innocence in our lives as children. This poem (“October”) is about wanting to hold on to the moment.” This comment was made anonymously on yahoo, I feel like this is a good interpretation that shows how Frost uses nature to teach us about different lessons or aspects of life.
When reading this 21-linned poem you get the sense that the speaker has a “prayerful” or hopeful tone. “The poem prays not to God but to the essence of the October morning” (Marcus 37). The speaker realizes that the days have gotten noticeably shorter, and they want this whole process to slow down. They do not want to see the last of the leaves blown away by “to-morrow’s wind, if it be wild” (line 3). “…(the speaker) asks that October make the day seem less brief , beguiling “us in the way you know.” The speaker wants to be deceived by October because if everything can simply be slowed, the loss of the beauty of nature into the death of winter may not be such a blow.” (Fagan 245). On the surface, this poem is about the transition from autumn to winter, but as you look into the poem further you can find deeper meaning. “Throughout the poem, the narrator laments the brevity of the season and wishes for a delay in the winter. As a reason for the delay, the narrator states simply in the final lines: "For the grapes' sake / Whose clustered fruit must else be lost" (18, 20). To slow down the flow of time for the sake of a common fruit seems worthless when considered literally.” (Lahaderne) I believe this symbolizes the narrators’ desire for time in his own life to slow down, merely for his own sake and not as much for the grapes’ regard.
A lot of focus at the end of this poem is about the grapes. It makes us