The Cocoon

As far as I can see this autumn haze

That spreading in the evening air both ways,

Makes the new moon look anything but new,

And pours the elm-tree meadow full of blue,

Is all the smoke from one poor house alone

With but one chimney it can call its own;

So close it will not light an early light,

Keeping its life so close and out of sight

No one for hours has set a foot outdoors

So much as to take care of evening chores.

The inmates may be lonely women-folk.

I want to tell them that with all this smoke

They prudently are spinning their cocoon

And anchoring it to an earth and moon

From which no winter gale can hope to blow it,—

Spinning their own cocoon did they but know it.

This poem is in the public domain.

“The Cocoon” was first published in The New Republic (February 1927) and later collected in Robert Frost’s West-Running Brook (Henry Holt & Company, 1928). About the poem, scholar Gavin Schulz writes in The Robert Frost Encyclopedia (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000), “It is a poem in which Frost explores the implications of human isolation. The poem is founded upon issues of perspective, and Frost positions himself carefully. The speaker’s point of vantage in ‘The Cocoon’ is vague, specified only by the opening phrase, ‘As far as I can see.’ The speaker’s vision is an internal gaze, located within the realm of his own imagination, which effectively isolates him from the world that he views. From this location he can observe and meditate upon human community while maintaining his own protective isolation.”

Robert Frost was an American poet born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco. The recipient of four Pulitzer Prizes and the Congressional Gold Medal, and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1958 to 1959, Frost authored numerous volumes of poetry, including In the Clearing (Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1962). He died on January 29, 1963, in Boston.