can anyone here interpit plowmen by robert frost?

Question

a plow they say to plow the snow
they cannot mean to pant it, no-
unless in bitterness to mock
at having cultivated rock

Answer 1

In line 2, you have "they can not mean to pant it". The line actually is "They can not mean to PLANT it". Maybe that mistake is why you are having trouble interpreting it. You plow a field in order to prepare the soil for planting a crop. The plowing will actually produce something fruitful. But plowing snow is not fruitful. You plow the snow just to get it out of the way, and then it melts, whether it was plowed or not. So plowing snow is kind of a pointless exercise, isn't it? Why bother? Then the poet suggests, in a sarcastic kind of way, that in New England (where Frost lived), the ground is so rocky and hard to grow things in, that plowing the rocky soil isn't much more pointless than plowing snow. Not that much grows in the rocky soil, anyway, so the farmer is used to plowing as a pointless exercise. So plowing snow makes about as much sense.