The Mountain

“The Mountain” is a persona poem, written from the point of view of a mountain who does not know its age and continuously asks an unspecified someone “tell me how old I am” (Lines 8, 16, 24, 32, 36). As the speaker continues to ask this question without answer, it moves through multiple emotions of fear, sorrow, confusion, and finally anger as it continues to ask questions that have no real answer. It is possible this poem reflects the poet’s own complex feelings around aging and the loneliness it brings. As with any personification of an inanimate object, “The Mountain” is a vehicle for exploring human feelings.

In the first stanza, the speaker of the poem says it feels something behind it and it “staggeringly halt[s] and burn[s]” (Line 3). The halting and burning suggest the mountain's formation, or birth, in the upheaval of plate-tectonic action. As the formation of mountains happens slowly over millions of years, it is not an event the mountain itself can remember.

In the next stanza, the speaker continues to depict the mountain in human activity. It is trying to read a book, “An open book confronts” (Line 6) the mountain, but now it is “too close to read in comfort” (Line 7).