Robert Frost’s “Bond and Free” imagines Love and Thought as two opposite ways of being. Love is rooted and protective: it clings to earth, surrounds itself with hills and walls, and leaves prints in snow, sand, and turf. The speaker sees Love as gladly bound. Thought, however, needs no such shelter. It has wings, slips free of every tether, and flies into the night as far as the star Sirius, only returning at dawn with its feathers smelling of burning. The mood is reflective and faintly uneasy. Love’s staying seems to give it a full, present beauty, while Thought keeps traveling to find that same beauty fused elsewhere—and may never quite possess it. The poem suggests genuine division, not a simple victory for either side.
Bond and Free — Summary
Love has earth to which she clings With hills and circling arms about-- Wall within wall to shut fear out. But Thought has need of no such things, For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.
On snow and sand and turf, I see Where Love has left a printed trace With straining in the world’s embrace. And such is Love and glad to be. But Thought has shaken his ankles free.
Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom And sits in Sirius’ disc all night, Till day makes him retrace his flight, With smell of burning on every plume, Back past the sun to an earthly room.
His gains in heaven are what they are. Yet some say Love by being thrall And simply staying possesses all In several beauty that Thought fares far To find fused in another star.