paraphase "once by the pacific" by Robert Frost?

Question

what is the title saying.

Answer 1

Paraphrase: "Once by the Pacific"

The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last 'Put out the Light' was spoken.

-- Robert Frost


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The speaker in the poem stands by the Pacific shore watching the waves pounding and thinks apprehensively of the destruction of all things. The paraphrase in a way does no more than describe the stimulus of the poem,since it seems safe to assume that Robert Frost was actually moved to this
somber musing by looking at the Pacific breakers. How do such thoughts generate a world in which as readers we powerfully experience a sustained moment of highly distinctive menace, waves raging and apocalypse impending? I say highly distinctive recognizing that each of us will bring to the reading of the poem his or her own literary and personal associations but also assuming that the elaborate structuring of language in these fourteen lines makes them quite different from any other modern
apocalyptic poem (Yeats' "Second Coming," the end of T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men," and so forth), whatever the vagaries of our individual readings.


Good luck

Answer 2

I believe it is stating the time & place where R. Frost was when he came up with the ideas expressed in the poem.