The speaker in Robert Frost’s “ God’s Garden ” offers an interpretation of the Genesis Garden of Eden narrative from the Old Testament. This early poem, written around 1890, features three twelve-line stanzas, in which the speaker offers spiritual guidance to erring mankind.
First Stanza: “God made a beatous garden”
The speaker announces, “God made a beauteous garden / With lovely flowers strown.” The first image thus comports with what readers already know of the description of the original garden. But then the speaker creatively claims that God placed in the garden “one straight, narrow pathway” that is clear, without the beauteous decoration of flower or tree.
After creating the beautiful garden of flowers and one straight, clear pathway, God brings “mankind to live,” and instructs mankind to take care of the “vines and fig trees” and to care for the flowers, but they are to “keep the pathway open / Your home is at the end.”
