Teachings of the Catholic Church - Questions     

Robert Frost, “The Most of It”

1. What happens in this poem?  What is the basic action?  What, in particular, does the man see emerge from the water?

2. What lines in the poem might cause you to think that this poem is about more than just a man’s surprise encounter with a “powerful buck” one day?

3. When the man cries out, what sort of a response does he want?  Does he get a reply to his call?

4. Would you consider that the poet had lied to you if you found out that the events of this poem had never actually happened to him?

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff's talus on the other side,
And then in the far-distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush--and that was all.

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