What does the poet mean by ‘yellow wood’?
Answers
yellow wood means old wood
Explanation:
This probably refers to the popular poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” is the first line. Frost is describing a New England road in autumn. He expects you to imagine trees covered with leaves that have changed to yellow, orange and brown but the overall effect is yellow. Many of the leaves have fallen and they are covering the surface of the two dirt roads. Because of the leaves you can see which road gets more traffic. Fewer of the leaves are disturbed on the road less traveled but they are about the same.
Frost has told us this in very few words. (New Englanders are known for being taciturn.) If you have ever been to New England in the fall you know immediately how it looks. Learning so much from a single line contributes to the readers experience. I described the scene accurately above but when Frost did it…wow.
If you like Frost’s poetry, you might like a choral suite called Frostiana, by Randall Thompson, in which several of Frost’s popular poems are set to music. I’m especially fond of The Pasture because it’s a love poem in which the speaker is an older man asking his wife to come along as he does a small farm chore just because he wants to share the experience with her.