"Range-Finding", by Robert Frost

Robert Frost is regarded as one of the greatest American poets. His work usually centered on rural life, in particular the countryside of the New England region. His works won him four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

"Range Finding" by Robert Frost

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung
And cut a flower beside a ground bird’s nest
Before it stained a single human breast.
The stricken flower bent double and so hung.
And still the bird revisited her young.
A butterfly its fall had dispossessed
A moment sought in air his flower of rest,
Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.

On the bare upland pasture there had spread
O’ernight ‘twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread
And straining cables wet with silver dew.
A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.
The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly,
But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.

In Robert Frost's "Range Finding", he explores humanity's effect on nature particularly the effects war has on nature and its creatures.  The poem is written as a sonnet, with 2 separate stanzas, the first with eight lines and the second with six lines, making it a Petrarchan sonnet. In the first lines of the octave, Frost introduces us to a "battle" which can stand for the battle between humans (war) or the battle between humans and nature. In this poem, Frost explores the effects war has on nature by following the path of a bullet.  However, the man's "stained breast" is not the focus of this poem. The poem instead focuses on everything up until that moment of impact.

The octet focuses on the beauty and subtlety of nature in contrast to the bullet.  The reader sees the "stricken flower" and the "dispossessed butterfly" as the bullet whizzes by. However, once the bullet passes, nature remains persistent. Frost juxtaposes nature and man in order to expose the ugliness of man compared to nature. The final stanza, the sextet, switches back to the spider from the first line. Frost emphasizes the beauty of the spider's web with its "silver dew." However, the bullet tears through the web and destroys it. The spider believes it has caught a meal, but is let down when it sees the tear. Here, Frost is commenting on how humans not only destroy their own properties but also  those of nature. As a result, the bullet "stains" both the spider's "diamond-strung" web but also a "single human breast."