What is the scariest poem in the language? I wager that many would select Poe’s “The Raven,” and it is unquestionable that Poe has the ability, in his verse as in his stories, to scare the dickens out of you. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" will get votes, as it should. There are poems by Emily Dickinson that, like a Magnum .44 wielded by Dirty Harry, could "blow your head clean off." Byron's "Darkness" makes you shudder, and many poems from the Elizabethans and the Metaphysicals make you see a skull and bones on the other side of your pillow. You can, however, make the case that Robert Frost -- Frost, who was once habitually misread as a genial Yankee sage -- has written as dark and frightening a poem as we have. The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal confessed himself terrified by the “eternal silence of those infinite spaces.” It is Frost who captures that silence.
The brilliant sonnet “Design” – in which a spider makes a meal of a moth -- exemplifies the view of nature that informs Frost’s poetry. Nature at work is aesthetically satisfying; it has order, pattern, design; but there is nothing moral or ethical about it. Nature, as opposed to human nature, is indifferent to individual life. Put another way, nature feeds on itself, and life requires death, as the life of the spider requires the death of the moth.
Humanity is stupid or destructive in Robinson Jeffers’s poems, which take the side of nature against human life. Frost doesn’t go that far, but in his poems the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Man is frail, and the loss of a man may be mourned, but the mourning lasts a mere moment. In Frost’s “Out, Out – “ a boy working with a buzz saw loses his hand in an accident. The results are surprisingly fatal: “No one believed. They listened at his heart. / Little – less – nothing! – and that ended it.” But what truly shocks the reader is not only the death in quick stages -- brilliantly captured in that line with two dashes -- -- but also the moment when the boy, a “big boy / Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart,” pleads, “Don’t let him cut my hand off -- / The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!” We infer that brother and big sister lack parents, and this knowledge deepens the pathos.
The ending of “Out, Out –“ seems at first to indict humanity for its essential callousness. They – the same “they” that had listened at the boy’s heart – go right on living: “And they, since they / Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.” Callousness or realism? The ending is similar to the ending of Auden’s great “Musée des Beaux Arts,” in which Icarus, in Brueghel’s painting, falls from the sky to his death in the sea, “and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen / Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, / Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.” Both poems are superb, but Frost’s will give you the chills while Auden’s more analytical approach will make you ponder the thesis that humanity is necessarily indifferent to human suffering.
Among the scariest of Frost’s poems is “Desert Places.” Compare it to Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man.” Both poems are about “nothing.” It may be that Stevens’s poem is the stronger of the two; it certainly requires enormous attention and rewards numerous re-readings. But “Desert Places” has something that “The Snow Man” with its “distant glitter of the January sun” lacks. “Desert Places” has terror.
In his "Pensées" (i.e., thoughts), Blaise Pascal wrote: “When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in an eternity before and after, the little space I fill engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.” Here is the final stanza of Frost's "Desert Places":
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars – on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
Take that, Pascal.-- DL
from the archive; first posted October 31, 2015
What a wonderful case you make for Frost as scariest, David. Though I never met him, I find him a scary person, as well.
Posted by: Angela Ball | September 24, 2022 at 12:01 PM
In light of current and past events, one might consider this poem with its martial tone one of the scariest poems ever written. This anthem to total domination clothed in sweet aspirations is truly frightening given the probable annihilation it portends for us all.
O say, can you see
By the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hail'd
At the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watch'd
Were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare
The bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free
And the home of the brave?
Posted by: Kyril Calsoyas | September 24, 2022 at 01:15 PM
With regard to the comment above, there is no denying that it is about a military engagement,but it is far from reveling in a martial tone or expressing a desire for domination. It arose, in fact, out of a desperate defensive action, against a British naval attack on a fort protecting Baltimore, shortly after the British had sacked Washington and burned the White House down in the War of 1812. If the Americans had then lost Baltimore, they would have been in a desperate state. However, the bombarded Fort McHenry held out, thereby forcing the British to retreat. The "bombs bursting in air" were from British naval fire, and the flag was a symbol of successful defense, ending the engagement. So, this anthem cannot properly be advanced as a scary paean to violence and military domination. In fact, its emotional appeal is rather to a defense against aggression leading to a cessation of military action. The response it should inspire is akin perhaps to that of Ukrainians after their bravery saved Kyiv from being taken....
Posted by: Mark Minton | September 24, 2022 at 02:03 PM
"Out, Out," for sure. Always a chilling, heartbreaking, sobering read. And indeed, the scariest places are our own. I'll go reread "Desert Places."
Posted by: Sally Ashton | September 24, 2022 at 04:11 PM
I completely agree with Mark Minton's rebuttal of Kyril Calsoyas's facile comment. Not all national anthems glorify violence; one that does is "La Marseillaise," but when we hear it -- in the famous scene in "Casablanca," for example -- it is an expression not of bloodthirstiness but of a love of liberty and a "Free France."
Posted by: David Lehman | September 24, 2022 at 04:45 PM
By the way, for me the poem that never fails to produce a pang of fear( and even more so in these times) is Yeats' "The Second Coming," especially its famous and unforgettable last two lines. These are especially horrifying to diplomats.
I rank it higher on the " scare meter" because it foresees human failure leading to social chaos and violence-- a prediction that never goes out of date unfortunately.
Not to debate other candidates, but " Design" seems to me to state simply a natural fact-- we all die-- but increasingly transcending fear with acceptance seems to be growing, as Godard's recent assisted chosen death seemed to highlight. The wonderful " Out..Out" is very sad, a life taken from an innocent pointlessly by chance. But again, the herd naturally has to go on living even while losing one of its kind. That's survival.
In sum, nothing seems scarier to me than the collapse of society through human venality or error. Think this is classic horror, as the Greek dramatist long ago perceived.
Posted by: Mark Minton | September 24, 2022 at 09:56 PM
Before reading Kyril Calsoyas's comment, the strains of the "Star Spangled Banner" always made me think that the ballgame is about to begin. After reading his comment, I still feel the same way.
Posted by: Bobby Mitchell | October 01, 2022 at 01:48 PM
Kyril Calsoyas's comments are ridiculous and insulting to any American.
Posted by: Glen Hartley | October 02, 2022 at 06:15 PM