Home Burial

Robert Frost’s narrative poem centers on a pivotal moment between a couple whose young child has died, sometime after the home burial mentioned in the title. The couple cannot successfully communicate their feelings with one another, and the physical burial becomes emblematic of the burial of their personal connection. The scene opens in media res (“in the middle of things”). The wife, whose name is later revealed as “Amy” (Line 41), descends a staircase as the man enters and observes her from below. The distance between them is both real and figurative. There are several steps between them emotionally as they both try to manage grief. 

Amy does not initially realize the husband is there as she turns at the top of the staircase, staring “over her shoulder at some fear” (Line 3) out the window. Her husband sees her start down the stairs and then turn back to the view. She seems compelled to do so and is oblivious to anything except the window when the husband speaks. His dialogue reveals that Amy’s actions are familiar to him: “What is it you see / From up there always” (Lines 6-7). The husband makes it clear he “want[s] to know” (Line 7) what in particular is bothering her, but Amy cannot explain her inner thoughts and instead “[sinks] upon her skirts” (Line 8) in a gesture of fatigue.

As she assumes this defeated posture, her face changes from “terrified to dull” (Line 9), and she remains silent. As the husband moves toward her, she “cower[s]” (Line 11). While his words are not necessarily unkind—“you must tell me, dear” (Line 12)—his quick “[m]ounting” (Line 11) of the steps and his physical “[a]dvancing” (Line 6) agitate her. She meets him with irritated resistance, thinking him a “[b]lind creature” (Line 16), unable to comprehend what she thinks or notes. Rather than tell him directly, she “refuse[s] him any help” (Line 13), shutting herself off in “silence” (Line 14).

To figure out the puzzle, he mimics her actions and looks out the window, too. He discovers that what she “see[s]” (Line 19) is the “little graveyard where my people are” (Line 24). He notes, however, it is not the older stones there that disturb her, “[b]ut the child’s mound” (Line 31). The fact that the mound of dirt is still visible suggests that the grave is relatively new. The husband correctly guesses the object of Amy’s obsession, but she doesn’t want to talk of it, protesting, “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t” (Line 32) before ducking under his arm and hurrying down the stairs where she glares at him. This action suggests she feels his speaking of the child’s grave is a violation of some sort. Their physical positions are reversed as she now stands by the door and he stays on the stairs.

In frustration, he blurts out the question, “Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?” (Line 37), repeating it “twice over before he knew himself” (Line 36). This suggests that he, too, feels grief over the loss of the child but has not communicated this to Amy. He believes they might share a common emotional experience, but she rebuffs him with an emphatic, “Not you!” (Line 38), mitigating it slightly with the caveat, “I don’t know rightly whether any man can” (Line 40). Her response reflects a view that was common during the 19th and early 20th centuries and continues to influence perceptions of gender and emotion today. During that time, women were often associated with caregiving and emotional expression, while men were more commonly expected to focus on providing for their families. Frost’s portrayal of their interaction complicates these assumptions, revealing the complexities of their emotions and misunderstandings, which continue to shape how they perceive one another. 

Amy’s grief has emotionally trapped her into a sense of helplessness that she wants to escape. There’s a sense of desperate wildness as she cries that she “must get out of here. I must get air” (Line 39). Her husband, desperate to stop her, begs her to “[h]elp [him]” (Line 46) ask the right questions to prevent her from leaving. The husband concedes that they are having trouble communicating, a fact he blames on their separate spheres as man and woman, a continuation of Amy’s earlier supposition that a man couldn’t understand what the death of a child means to a mother. The husband indicates he is willing to “partly give up being a man / With women-folk” (Lines 52-53). He even promises not to broach anything Amy’s “a-mind to name” (Line 55). 

Yet, he doubts this enforced silence on certain topics is healthy for their marriage. When Amy’s need for escape isn’t abated, he pleads once more, “Let me into your grief” (Line 62), and uses for a second time the phrase, “Don’t carry it to someone else this time” (Line 60), which suggests Amy has previously been vulnerable with someone else instead of relying on him. He pleads with her, “Give me my chance” (Line 64), insisting, “I’m not so much / Unlike other folks as your standing there / Apart would make me out” (Lines 62-64). Here, he gives Amy a reason to reconsider and to back away from the door. However, he sabotages the moment by shifting from offering understanding to indicating blame. 

After asking for a “chance” (Line 64), he negates Amy’s ability to give him one by suggesting she “overdo[es] it a little” (Line 65) with her grief. Further, he wonders why Amy believes it’s proper “[t]o take your mother-loss of a first child / So inconsolably” (Lines 67-68). The implication that heartbreak and depression should be easily conquered seems antithetical to his previous insistence for Amy to share her feelings with him. He is dismissing the experience of her grief. 

Amy, in the throes of her own woe, is also having trouble understanding that people process grief in different ways. Anyone not showing her type of extreme grief seems heartless to her. Both partners shut down options for the other’s response, which in turn makes them defensive. Amy accuses him of “sneering” (Line 70). Upset that he can’t talk of his own child’s death, the husband admits she makes him “angry” (Line 72), escalating the argument until Amy begins a monologue, which further explains her fixation on the window. 

Amy reveals that not only does she feel disjointed by the child’s grave, but the view also reminds her of her husband’s digging of it, an act she associates as betrayal. She believes this act erases her previous knowledge of her husband, “I didn’t know you” (Line 82), she tells him. The grave-digging is a monstrous act to Amy: “[H]ow could you?” (Line 77), she asks, wondering how he could disturb the dirt so lightly. She admits that she went “down the stairs and up the stairs / To look again” (Lines 83-84) while he dug, the same action he catches her replaying at the beginning of the scene.

She can’t forgive his coming inside the house afterward, with his shoes “stain[ed] […] / Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave” (Lines 88-89), only to talk about everyday things to an unseen visitor. She notes how she overheard him speak casually of a rotting fence, making it seem as if “[he] couldn’t care” (Line 101) about his child’s still body in the “darkened parlor” (Line 100). In actuality, the statement the husband made of the fence—“Three foggy mornings and one rainy day / Will rot the best birch fence a man can build” (Lines 96-97)—could allude to his rotting hope for his home and his grief over his son’s death. Amy instead equates his actions with the cruelty of death, and it is this she revisits, not just the mound, every time she looks out the window.

Self-isolating, Amy condemns her husband and other fair-weather friends who “make pretense of following to the grave” (Line 106). She bitterly notes that these people grieve so briefly, then “their minds are turned / And making the best of their way back to life / And living people, and things they understand” (Lines 107-109). Amy thinks this kind of grieving is inadequate to suit the loss and believes “the world’s evil” (Line 110). She cannot accept that people do not grieve her loss as she does. The husband tries to give her space for releasing her emotions but assumes it’s alleviated once she’s had a good cry. This is the opposite of what she has meant and exacerbates her grief.

Therefore, when he urges her to shut the door and not expose personal pain publicly, she rejects him. Saying, “I must go— / Somewhere out of this house” (Lines 116-117) because it is no longer functions as a home to her. Panicked that “someone [is] coming down the road!” (Line 115), the husband threatens her by saying he will follow her, “and bring [her] back by force. I will!—” (Line 120). However, the scene ends before revealing how either spouse responds afterward. The audience is left suspended in the same moment of grief and tension, observing the couple at a critical breaking point in their relationship.

The difficult event of their child’s death brings out weaknesses in each character. Amy becomes withdrawn, despairing, and resentful, believing no one cares about her child’s death or her suffering, including her husband in those who have betrayed her. The husband, who grieves too, cannot express how he does so to Amy, which deepens their divide. Further, his attempts to understand her are truncated by traditional conventions, Amy’s own resistance, and his own need to force the situation to change.