Robert Frost

Brown's Descent, or the Willy-nilly Slide

BROWN lived at such a lofty farm
:That everyone for miles could see
His lantern when he did his chores
:In winter after half-past three.
And many must have seen him make
:His wild descent from there one night,
’Cross lots, ’cross walls, ’cross everything,
:Describing rings of lantern light.
Between the house and barn the gale
:Got him by something he had on
And blew him out on the icy crust

Icy crust physics

The 'icy crust / That cased the world' is frictionless—Brown can't grip it with his heel no matter how hard he tries. This explains why he slides uncontrollably rather than simply falling.

:That cased the world, and he was gone!
Walls were all buried, trees were few:
:He saw no stay unless he stove
A hole in somewhere with his heel.
:But though repeatedly he strove
And stamped and said things to himself,
:And sometimes something seemed to yield,
He gained no foothold, but pursued
:His journey down from field to field.
Sometimes he came with arms outspread

Spinning descent choreography

Frost emphasizes Brown's body position changes: 'arms outspread / Like wings,' 'Sitting or standing,' 'reeled, he lurched, he bobbed'—these aren't random details but show how desperately he's trying to control an uncontrollable situation.

:Like wings, revolving in the scene
Upon his longer axis, and
:With no small dignity of mien.
Faster or slower as he chanced,
:Sitting or standing as he chose,
According as he feared to risk
:His neck, or thought to spare his clothes,

The lantern as witness

Brown keeps the lantern lit throughout the entire descent—it's not just a light source but proof of his presence. The poem later reveals villagers are watching and interpreting the light's movements, making it a form of unintended communication.

He never let the lantern drop.
:And some exclaimed who saw afar
The figures he described with it,
:”I wonder what those signals are

Misinterpreted signals

Villagers watching the lantern light describe 'figures' and 'signals,' inventing explanations (sold his farm? made Master of the Grange?). They're projecting meaning onto random movement—a comment on how we narrativize what we don't understand.

Brown makes at such an hour of night!
:He’s celebrating something strange.
I wonder if he’s sold his farm,
:Or been made Master of the Grange.”
He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked;
:He fell and made the lantern rattle
(But saved the light from going out.)
:So half-way down he fought the battle
Incredulous of his own bad luck.
:And then becoming reconciled
To everything, he gave it up
:And came down like a coasting child.
“Well—I—be—” that was all he said,
:As standing in the river road,
He looked back up the slippery slope
:(Two miles it was) to his abode.

Shift to confession

At line 45, the poem abruptly switches from narrative to first-person: 'Sometimes as an authority / On motor-cars, I'm asked...' The speaker has been holding back, and now admits he's been using Brown's story to make a point.

Sometimes as an authority
:On motor-cars, I’m asked if I
Should say our stock was petered out,
:And this is my sincere reply:
Yankees are what they always were.
:Don’t think Brown ever gave up hope
Of getting home again because
:He couldn’t climb that slippery slope;
Or even thought of standing there
:Until the January thaw
Should take the polish off the crust.
:He bowed with grace to natural law,
And then went round it on his feet,

Yankee pragmatism

Brown doesn't wait for the thaw or give up—he 'went round it on his feet.' This is the poem's actual argument: Yankees solve problems by working around them, not through them. It's about adaptation, not heroism.

:After the manner of our stock;
Not much concerned for those to whom,
:At that particular time o’clock,
It must have looked as if the course
:He steered was really straight away
From that which he was headed for—
:Not much concerned for them, I say:
No more so than became a man—
:And politician at odd seasons.
I’ve kept Brown standing in the cold
:While I invested him with reasons;
But now he snapped his eyes three times;
:Then shook his lantern, saying, “Ile’s

Practical resolution

After all the drama, Brown simply takes 'the long way home / By road, a matter of several miles.' The solution is mundane, which is exactly Frost's point about how real people actually behave.

’Bout out!” and took the long way home
:By road, a matter of several miles.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

What the poem is actually about

This isn't a poem about a man sliding down a hill. It's a poem about how we *tell stories* about ordinary events and the meanings we project onto them. For the first 44 lines, we're caught in a vivid narrative—Brown's dramatic descent, the villagers misreading his lantern signals, the physical comedy of his struggle. But then Frost stops and admits he's been using Brown as a rhetorical device.

The speaker reveals himself as an authority on "motor-cars" (a detail that seems random until you realize it's about progress and change) who uses Brown's story to argue something about Yankee character. But here's the trap: by admitting he's been "investing" Brown with meanings, Frost shows us that the entire preceding narrative was shaped by the speaker's agenda, not by what actually happened. Brown's real solution—taking the long way around by road—is so ordinary it almost disappears under all the drama.

This is Frost's critique of rhetoric and storytelling itself. We love narratives of struggle and ingenuity, so we dress up simple facts in dramatic language. Brown slides down a hill, can't climb back up, and walks home via an alternate route. Everything else is the speaker's interpretation.

The lantern and misreading

Notice what the villagers actually see: light moving in patterns they interpret as 'signals.' They construct elaborate theories—Brown's sold his farm, he's been made Master of the Grange—based entirely on random movement. The lantern isn't communicating anything; it's just there. But humans are meaning-making creatures, so we read intention into accident.

This connects to the poem's larger argument about how Yankees (and people generally) respond to problems. The speaker claims they 'go around' obstacles rather than through them, but what he's really describing is pragmatism without pretense. Brown doesn't dramatize his situation; he just finds another route. The villagers, by contrast, are the ones adding drama—they're the ones who need the story to be about something significant. Frost's speaker admits to the same impulse, which makes him complicit in the very thing he's critiquing.