By Robert Frost (1913)
We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.
’Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.
But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.
Analysis
“Revelation” compresses the psychology of concealment into twelve spare lines. Frost describes the masks we build with “light words that tease and flout,” hiding our deeper selves until someone “find us really out.” The rhythm’s simplicity disguises moral gravity: even truth can wound, yet remaining unseen leaves us yearning.
The poem broadens from personal reticence to cosmic scale — “from babes that play / At hide-and-seek to God afar.” In that expansion, Frost makes revelation a universal need, not just confession but communion. Speech becomes both exposure and salvation. The poem’s final couplet, quiet and symmetrical, suggests that all creatures, divine or human, must eventually speak and tell where they are.