The ovenbird, a “loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird”, is a meaningful choice by Robert Frost. This bird is not the melodious, spring bird with which everyone associates. Instead of a song, the ovenbird “makes…trunks sound”, he says, he knows and he frames; but he does not sing. Singing would direct away from the theme of a “diminished thing” and console the reader, rather than prepare him for the cruelties of the world, of summer and upcoming fall. As a mid-summer bird, the ovenbird serves

Imagery also adds to the poem’s symbolic representation of the ovenbird’s aide to spring’s passing. The washing away of blooms by the summer showers is one painted image. The petal-fall and overcasts portray dreariness that accompany the mid-summer associated with the ovenbird. “Highway dust is over all” sets the scene of the brutal world as implied by the bird’s call.

The question arises, who is the ovenbird? Who is it that brings with it all of these images and attitudes of sorrow? The poem says that the ovenbird is “a singer everyone has heard.” This is a singer, “Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again,” and who “knows in singing not to sing.” Who fits this description better than Robert Frost himself? How many literate people are unfamiliar with the works of Robert Frost? I know of none. He can easily be described as “a singer everyone has heard.” According to a critic of Frost, H.A. Maxon, Frost may be using a metaphor introduced in his poem “Into My Own,” where the trunks of trees c

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