Frost treats human life as a kind of riding. The one certain thing, he says, is that we are riders—guiders, though not very successful ones—through land, sea, and now air. Birth itself is only being “mounted bareback on the earth”; we can picture the newborn up astride, small fist clenched in the animal’s bushy hide. The wildest mount is a headless horse, directionless and unbridled. It runs off course and seems to resist every coaxing word. The speaker’s mood is wry and clear-eyed: he knows how little control we really have. But the final line keeps a stubborn, half-playful hope—there are still ideas we haven’t tried. The result is both funny and serious, a knowing shrug at trying to steer a life that rarely obeys. It doesn’t lecture; it grins at the difficulty and keeps riding. We may never be expert guiders, but we are not out of tricks.
Riders — Summary
The surest thing there is is we are riders, And though none too successful at it, guiders, Through everything presented, land and tide And now the very air, of what we ride.
What is this talked-of mystery of birth But being mounted bareback on the earth? We can just see the infant up astride, His small fist buried in the bushy hide.
There is our wildest mount--a headless horse. But though it runs unbridled off its course, And all our blandishments would seem defied, We have ideas yet that we haven’t tried.