The Door in the Dark
In going from room to room in the dark, I reached out blindly to save my face, But neglected, however lightly, to lace My fingers and close my arms in an arc. A slim door got in past my guard, And hit me a blow in the head so hard I had my native simile jarred. So people and things don’t pair any more With what they used to pair with before.
The Door in the Dark - context Summary
Published 1936 in a Further Range
This brief lyric by Robert Frost was first published in 1936 in the collection A Further Range. The poem uses a small, comic incident—a door striking the speaker in the dark—to register a larger observation about how familiar relations have shifted: "people and things don't pair any more / With what they used to pair with before." Placed in Frost's mid-career output, the poem functions as a compact, aphoristic remark on misrecognition and changing associations rather than a narrated episode with a resolved moral.
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