Stopping by Woods

on a Snowy Evening

Stopping by Woods on a
Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I
know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with
snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

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.[1]

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

is a poem written in 1922 by Robert Frost,
and published in 1923 in his New
Hampshire volume. Imagery,
personification, and repetition are
prominent in the work. In a letter to Louis
Untermeyer, Frost called it "my best bid
for remembrance".[2]

Overview
Frost wrote the poem in June 1922 at his
house in Shaftsbury, Vermont. He had
been up the entire night writing the long
poem "New Hampshire" and had finally
finished when he realized morning had
come. He went out to view the sunrise
and suddenly got the idea for "Stopping
by Woods on a Snowy Evening".[2] He
wrote the new poem "about the snowy
evening and the little horse as if I'd had a
hallucination" in just "a few minutes
without strain".[3]

The poem is written in iambic tetrameter

in the Rubaiyat stanza created by Edward
FitzGerald. Each verse (save the last)
follows an AABA rhyming scheme, with
the following verse's A line rhyming with
that verse's B line, which is a chain rhyme
(another example is the terza rima used
in Dante's Inferno.) Overall, the rhyme
scheme is AABA BBCB CCDC DDDD.[4]

The text of the poem describes the

thoughts of a lone wagon driver (the
speaker), pausing at night in his travel to
watch snow falling in the woods. It ends
with him reminding himself that, despite
the loveliness of the view, "I have
promises to keep, / And miles to go
before I sleep."
Use in eulogies
In the early morning of November 23,
1963, Sid Davis of Westinghouse
Broadcasting reported the arrival of
President John F. Kennedy's casket at the
White House. As Frost was one of the
President's favorite poets, Davis
concluded his report with a passage
from this poem but was overcome with
emotion as he signed off.[5][6]

At the funeral of former Canadian prime

minister Pierre Trudeau, on October 3,
2000, his eldest son Justin rephrased the
last stanza of this poem in his eulogy:
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep. He
has kept his promises and earned his
sleep."[7]

References
1. "Robert Frost: "Stopping by Woods
on a Snowy Evening" " . Poetry
Foundation. Poetry Foundation.
Retrieved January 6, 2019.
2. Tuten, Nancy Lewis; Zubizarreta,
John (2001). The Robert Frost
Encyclopedia . Greenwood
Publishing. p. 347. ISBN 0-313-
29464-X. Retrieved December 9,
2011.
3. Frost, Carol. "Sincerity and
Inventions: On Robert Frost" .
Academy of American Poets.
Archived from the original on June
15, 2010. Retrieved March 4, 2010.
4. Poirier, Richard (1977). Robert Frost:
The Work of Knowing . London:
Oxford University Press. p. 181.
ISBN 0-19-502216-5. "In fact, the
woods are not, as the Lathem edition
would have it (with its obtuse
emendation of a comma after the
second adjective in line 13), merely
'lovely, dark, and deep.' Rather, as
Frost in all the editions he supervised
 intended, they are 'lovely, [i.e.] dark
and deep'; the loveliness thereby
partakes of the depth and darkness
which make the woods so ominous."
5. "My Brush with History - "We Heard
the Shots …": Aboard the Press Bus in
Dallas 40 Years Ago" (PDF).
med.navy.mil. Archived from the
original (PDF) on September 26,
2012. Retrieved June 30, 2013.
6. Davis, Sid; Bennett, Susan; Trost,
Catherine ‘Cathy’; Rather, Daniel ‘Dan’
Irvin Jr (2004). "Return To The White
House". President Kennedy Has Been
Shot: Experience The Moment-to-
 Moment Account of The Four Days
That Changed America . Newseum
(illustrated ed.). Naperville, IL:
Sourcebooks. p. 173. ISBN 1-4022-
0317-9. Retrieved December 10,
2011 – via Google Books.
7. "Justin Trudeau's eulogy" . On This
Day. Toronto, ON, CA: CBC Radio.
October 3, 2000. Retrieved
December 10, 2011.

External links
 Wikisource has original text related
to this article:
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening

Frost, Robert, Stopping by Woods on a

Snowy Evening , Representative poetry
(online ed.), University of Toronto. Text
of the poem, along with the rhyming
pattern.
"Woods", Frost , Poets, UIUC.
Discussion and analysis of the poem.

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