"Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" Video

Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” was published in 1922 as part of Frost’s New Hampshire collection. The poem consists of four stanzas written in iambic tetrameter. Like much of Frost’s work, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” takes the natural world as its subject, ascribing metaphysical meaning to seemingly banal pastoral scenes. Despite his feeling that critics had a tendency to press the poem “for more than it should be pressed for,” Frost called the work his “best bid for remembrance.”

“Whose woods these are I think I know,” the poem begins. “His house is in the village though; / He will not see me stopping here / To watch his woods fill up with snow.” In this stanza, Frost’s speaker stops his sleigh to watch the snow falling in the woods on a dark winter evening. While he initially worries that the owner of the property will be upset by his presence, he soon remembers that the owner lives in town. He is free to enjoy the beauty of the falling snow.

“My little horse must think it queer,” the speaker goes on, “To stop without a farmhouse near / Between the woods and frozen lake / The darkest evening of the year.” Here, the speaker notes his sleigh horse’s confusion at his master’s decision to stop in such an isolated setting. In fact, the horse “gives his harness bells a shake / To ask if there is some mistake.” But the speaker enjoys the isolation, along with the peaceful atmosphere of the snow-covered woods.

Throughout the poem, Frost relies on a remarkably simple structure of four stanzas that each contain four lines. His rhyme scheme, however, is surprisingly complex; while the first, second, and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme, the third line always rhymes with the first, second, and fourth lines of the following stanza. This continues until the final stanza, which contains four rhyming lines: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep.”

Frost’s decision to repeat the final line could be read in several ways. On one hand, it reiterates the idea that the speaker has responsibilities that he is reluctant to fulfill. In this sense, the speaker’s “promises to keep” can be read as a reference to the traditional duties of a New England farmer. In a time and a place where hard work is valued above all things, watching snow fall in the woods may be viewed as a trivial indulgence. Even a work animal, the speaker allows, would “think it queer.”

On the other hand, the repetition of the final line could be a signal that the narrator is slowly falling asleep. Within this interpretation, one could argue that the poem actually ends with the death of the speaker, lulled into a deep sleep by the cadence of the softly falling snow.