The Unity of Frost's Masques

l OBERT FROST'S TWO MASQUES-A Masque of Reason (1945) and A J Masque of Mercy (1947)-present a problem which is almost unique in his poetical work. Ordinarily his poems show a marked imaginative inception and are brought to a satisfying completionnot too neatly tied up, not dogmatic, but finished in form and content. This is no doubt what Frost meant in part when he traced the progress of a poem thus: