Mowing Art and Culture Quotes

One thing farmers don't have much of is free time. Though the farmer-speaker in this poem has way too much work to do to just sit around and daydream, he still manages to get his poetry done anyway even without getting a break. Multitasking for the win.

It sounds like Frost didn't think much of those poets who lounge around waiting for "the muse" to drop some nugget of poetic genius into their head. At the time Frost was writing, being a poet was a perfectly legitimate career option, and he was looking to actually get paid for his efforts. The key of this line, though, is that it really was an effort, and that no imaginary being was going to just drop by with inspiration and a bag of gold. As the internet tells us, "Ain't nobody got time for that!"

Can a little bit of embellishment actually make the truth weaker? Frost certainly thinks so. It's the classic "lipstick on a pig" scenario, where no amount of fluff or frills can change the fundamental truth, so why bother?