Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Two minutes of winter dusk — a snowbound farm lane, woods filling up with snow, a lit farmhouse across a frozen lake, a horse and sleigh on the road, and the deep dark woods at the end.
The words
Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound's the sweepOf 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.
What to listen for
Four verses, and the rhyme is handed from each one to the next like a lantern passed along a line of people. In the first three verses the third line is the odd one out — know, though, here, snow — and then that odd sound becomes the rhyme of the whole verse that follows. Listen for it: queer, near, year picks up here.
Then in the last verse Frost stops handing it on. All four lines rhyme, the poem closes its own door, and the last line simply repeats. Nothing new is said — which is why it feels like a man deciding to move on rather than a man finishing a thought.
Almost nothing happens. A traveller stops on a road at night, a horse shakes its bells, snow falls. The poem never explains what the woods are or what the promises are, and it is better for the silence. Read it aloud slowly and it is a poem about how tempting it is to stay still, and how we go on anyway.
Public domain in the United States. Reading and film made for Planet Neverland.