to hire Silas again because he left the farm during a busy haying season But Mary realizes that Silas has not returned to work He has come back to his close ones in his final moments She says to Warren He Silas has come home to die Silas does not go to his brother who is a rich bank director This shows how lonely Silas is In the end Silas dies So Silas s story is the story of a lonely man who seeks human connection in his final moments Lonely Walker The speaker of Acquainted with the Night is also lonely He walks alone through the city streets at night He says I have been one acquainted with the night Here the night does not only mean darkness but also sadness and loneliness When he meets a watchman he lowers his eyes and does not speak This shows that he does not want human contact So the whole poem shows a man completely cut off from society Such a theme of loneliness is a clear mark of modern poetry Tradition vs Modern Thinking Modern poets often question old traditions Frost does the same in Mending Wall In this poem the speaker and his neighbour meet every spring to repair the stone wall between their lands However the speaker questions the necessity of the wall He says his apple trees will never get across the wall and eat his neighbor s pines Moreover they have no cows to keep in or out So he thinks the wall is not necessary at all It only separates people However the neighbor does not agree He believes in traditional thinking He is not happy to accept modern ways of thinking So his only reply is Good fences make good neighbours Uncertainty of Life and Choices Modern poets deal with the uncertainty of life and choices We find this theme in Frost s The Road Not Taken The speaker comes in front of a diverging road in a yellow wood He feels sad that he cannot travel both roads He must choose one but he does not know which road will give him better rewards This is the dilemma of modern men Sometimes we make important choices But we cannot know if the outcome will be good or bad Harsh Adulthood Modern men struggle with the harsh reality of life They feel the burden of responsibilities So they often wish to return to the simple joy of childhood This is exactly what happens in Birches In this poem the speaker sees some birch trees bent by ice storms He imagines that the trees are bent this way because a young boy has been swinging them Then he remembers that as a boy he also swung on birches I once myself a swinger of birches And so I dream of going back to be The speaker wishes he could go back to childhood and enjoy the simple joy again For these reasons Robert Frost is truly a modern poet His poems are simple in setting but deep in meaning He talks about loneliness uncertainty tradition and the desire for escape He uses simple life in a pastoral setting to express modern human problems