In the works "For Once, Then, Something," "Desert Places," "Design," and "Acquainted with the Night," Frost takes the concrete aspect of nature and illustrates things that are abstract such as rejuvenation, isolation, feelings about fate or destiny, and loneliness. He portrays to us that nature may not always be, as we perceive it. .
In "Desert Places" Frost uses nature to mirror the feelings of man. The sand is of a white color which is opposite of reality. The snow and the night are descending together. The black and white is working together to muffle sensation and obliterate perception. As the snow piles on, obliterating all distinction, the field becomes an inanimate, dead thing, unmarked by, and unreflective of, the care of man, the very thing that gave it its positive identity as a field. "All the animals are smothered in their lairs" (1012). This is figured as death, the ultimate thing that smothers all life, leaving the persona alone. Confronted with the deadness, the persona finds that he, too, is "absent-spirited" (1012) and "included" in the loneliness. The "blanker whiteness of benighted snow"(1013) truly has "nothing to express"(1013). The "benighted snow" is obliterated with dark and night. Also it tells the reader that one's intelligence and spirit determines who we are and if we do not have it then we are lonely. Frost suggests that internal loneliness is much more frightening than external loneliness. .
In "Design," Frost is less in awe of nature and, instead, fearful of it. He takes two of nature's most innocent characters, the moth and the spider, and finds tragic randomness in their lives. He questions how nature can be so beautiful, yet so full of chaos at the same time and whether nature is really what we imagine. "Design" is set in the morning, which is a time of rebirth, but here it is made a time of death. Frost describes the spider, the moth, and the real-all, all opposite of their real life states.
