By Robert Frost (1913)
A stranger came to the door at eve,
And he spoke the bridegroom fair.
He bore a green-white stick in his hand,
And for all burden care.
He asked with the eyes more than the lips
For a shelter for the night,
And he turned and looked at the road afar
Without a window light.
The bridegroom came forth into the porch
With “Let us look at the sky,
And question what of the night to be,
Stranger, you and I.”
The woodbine leaves littered the yard,
The woodbine berries were blue,
Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;
“Stranger, I wish I knew.”
Within, the bride in the dusk alone
Bent over the open fire,
Her face rose-red with the glowing coal
And the thought of the heart’s desire.
The bridegroom looked at the weary road,
Yet saw but her within,
And wished her heart in a case of gold
And pinned with a silver pin.
The bridegroom thought it little to give
A dole of bread, a purse,
A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God,
Or for the rich a curse;
But whether or not a man was asked
To mar the love of two
By harboring woe in the bridal house,
The bridegroom wished he knew.
Analysis
“Love and a Question” explores the moral tension between charity and devotion. A stranger arrives at a newlywed’s home seeking shelter, and the bridegroom must decide whether to offer compassion to a weary traveler or protect the sanctity of his bridal night. Frost stages this conflict with quiet dramatic irony: the stormy evening and the “green-white stick” the stranger carries echo the unease between duty and desire.
The poem’s quatrains unfold like a ballad, yet the story remains unresolved — “The bridegroom wished he knew.” Frost resists closure because moral life rarely grants it. The real test is internal: the husband’s awareness that generosity and jealousy coexist in every heart. In its restraint and ambiguity, the poem shows Frost’s early mastery of ethical drama through ordinary circumstance.