In "A Passing Glimpse," the speaker laments the quick pace of modern life. Rushing past nature on the way to somewhere, he realizes that he often is not able to stop and enjoy flowers and foliage.
Frost opens the poem with the lines:
I often see flowers from a passing car
That are gone before I can tell what they are.
I want to get out of the train and go back
To see what they were beside the track.
The speaker is not recounting any specific time that he spotted flowers as he traveled; rather, he refers to many times in which he is in a moving vehicle being transported from one place to another. During these times, he "often" happens to notice a blur of flowers outside the window as he speeds by. In a car, for example, just as he catches sight of the flowers,...
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he passes them. Therefore, he cannot identify exactly what type of flowers they are. Likewise, on a train he cannot tell what kinds of flowers grow alongside the tracks; the only way he would be able to discern their species would be if he were to disembark the train, walk back to the flowers, and examine them up close.
The poem presents a wistful tone, as the speaker clearly wishes that he could identify the flowers. He knows what the flowers are not:
Not bluebells gracing a tunnel mouth—
Not lupine living on sand and drouth.
The speaker could be riding in a car or on a train that is about to enter or has just exited a tunnel. He could be traveling near dry terrain as evinced by the sandy and drought-afflicted conditions. Or he could be nowhere near a tunnel or a desert, since he asserts that the flowers he saw are decidedly not the ones (bluebells or lupine) that may grow in those places.
In any case, the speaker is nowhere near or stationary enough to be able to determine exactly what types of flowers he sees. He is merely passing by and
Not in position to look too close.
Frost is illustrating what is lost in a mechanized, modern world—closeness to nature. Only an unhurried pedestrian could be near enough to see, enjoy, and appreciate the flowers.