Explicate the poem "stopping by woods on a snowy evening" 6 pages

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost

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.

• Now, we will pause so that you can print a copy of the poem and look for the following:

• What is the form of the poem? • Do you see any consonance, sibilance, alliteration or assonance? • Do you see any examples of metaphor, simile, symbol, or personification?

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.

Sibilance

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.

Consonance = “d” and “p” sounds

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.

Assonance = short “i” sound

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.

personification

Sleep is a common symbol (more on this later)

personification

metaphor

A A B A

B B C B

C C D C

D D D D

For each quatrain Frost employs the same rhyme scheme with the 1st, 2nd, and 4th lines sharing the same rhyme– and the 3rd line adding a new rhyme that repeats in the subsequent stanza.

The rhyming sound of here is repeated in queer / near / year in the next quatrain

The rhyming sound of lake is repeated in shake / mistake / flake in the next quatrain

The rhyming sound of sweep is repeated in deep / keep / sleep / sleep in the next quatrain

Note that in the final quatrain the sound of the third line, unlike the third lines in the rest of the poem stays the same as the other three lines

AND the third line and the fourth line are the same (which adds an interesting tone to the lines)

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.

Thus, the poem is a stanzaic form, consisting of 4 quatrains with a rhyme scheme of aaba / bbcb / ccdc / dddd

• Okay … we should pause again:

• Now try and determine what “happens” in the poem • And what the poet describes • Do not think about what you think the poem means • Do not think about what you think the poet is saying • Think about what the language actually says … • Jot down some notes on your printed copy of the poem

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.

I think I know who owns these woods, but his house is in the village (i.e., not near here); therefore, he will not see me stopping by them to watch as the snow fills them.

My horse must think it is strange that we have stopped here by these woods that are not near any farmhouse that we have stopped somewhere between these woods and the frozen lake that we have stopped on the longest night of the evening (winter solstice).

My horse shakes his harness (and the bells of the harness ring) as if he wishes to ask if we have stopped here by mistake. The only other sound I hear is the gentle breeze Of a soft wind and the lightly falling snow in that gentle breeze.

These woods I am looking at are beautiful, dark and deep, (more on this later) However, I have obligations I must tend to, And many miles to travel before I can sleep, And many miles to travel before I can sleep.

The first three stanzas (quatrains) of the poem set up a simple story.

The final quatrain is where the poem becomes tricky. Do no forget that the poem begins -->

-- (though not specifically stated in the poem) -- with the fact the poet and his horse (who is pulling a sled)

have stopped (on a trip home from somewhere) by (outside of) some woods And the speaker is watching snow fall.

He is not IN the woods; he is BY the woods. We know these facts because of (a) the title and (b) the description in the poem.

The perspective of the poem comes from the speaker who is thinking to himself.

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. The speaker states that he thinks he knows whose woods these are (who owns the land). (1) Possibly, he is not certain. WE can infer that it is difficult to tell where one is when traveling in the snow in the middle of a winter night. (2) He is certain – I think … meaning I know.

The owner of these woods does not live out here in the country. He lives in the village (where POSSIBLY) the speaker also lives. We don’t know. We can infer / suggest the possibility. So, obviously, that person would not see the speaker stopping to watch the snow fall on the woods.

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. Queer = odd / strange A horse cannot think something is odd / strange. The poet personifies the horse– however– he is not saying the horse DOES think it is odd to have stopped Instead, he says he thinks his horse must think it is odd. From this we can infer that the poet realizes it is strange to stop in the middle of the country on a cold, winter night (for it is strange since it is cold and one could freeze to death) He has stopped where there are no nearby farmhouses) He might not know EXACTLY where he is, but he knows he is by these woods and a frozen lake (either one he has passed or will pass by soon) which implies he has taken this journey before (perhaps many times) It is the winter solstice (12/21) – the longest time of darkness in 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. Once again, the horse is personified. A horse cannot ask if a mistake has been made. The horse, we can infer, is shaking its harness bells

(which indicates it is pulling a sled that the poet is traveling with) because cold snow has been falling on it. As before, we can also infer, that the poet realizes it might be a mistake– that it is odd– that he stopped on a cold, snowy evening to watch the woods fill up with snow. Thus we might infer that personifying the horse allows the speaker to focus on the oddity of his choice.

In addition to the sound of the bells on the harness, he also hears the gentles sounds of light wind and snow. The repetition of “s” sounds (sibilance) is very beautiful, and we can infer that it reflects the softness of the falling snow and gentle breeze

He compares, using a metaphor, the sound of the wind to the sound of something being swept– such as a broom across a floor which would create a very soft, swishing sound. He uses downy– which means soft, “pillowy,” fluffy– to describe the snow that is gently falling (not a snowstorm or blizzard– but a gentle falling snow)

We can also infer that before this stanza, the poet has been very much lost in his thoughts– but the sound of the bells being shaken has “awoken” him to his surroundings. Before. He was just thinking about where he was– and now he is employing his senses (namely hearing and next vision).

And now the poem becomes tricky.

The first three stanzas tell a simple story of stopping by some woods to watch the snow fall.

He describes where he thinks he is – and that it is strange to have stopped in such a desolate place on such a cold and long night.

He is thinking to himself.

His thoughts seem to be interrupted by the sound of the bell made by his horse shaking the snow off itself.

As if, possibly, it shakes him into awareness Next, he is going to make a judgment about what he sees.

And now the language gets very ambiguous.

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. The first line is very rich and ambiguous. It can be read in two ways

(1) The woods are (a) lovely  beautiful, appealing, alluring (b) dark  literally it is night and hard to see (c) deep  extending far in width

(1) The woods are lovely  beautiful, appealing, alluring AND that loveliness is (a) dark  which also has possible implications of being sinister and dangerous AND (b) deep  which has an implication of being mysterious and thus, potentially, somewhat dangerous, etc.

From this we can infer some very interesting things which we can consider after we finish explicating the poem.

So– the beauty of the woods might be alluring and appealing and aesthetically pleasing to look at, but he clearly has other obligations to attend to (these specific promises (obligations) are not stated but we can infer such things as work, family, etc.)

In addition to these promises / obligations, he also a distance to travel before he can go to sleep. The literal understanding is simply that he has a lot more ground to travel before he gets to where he is going so that he can get to sleep. But sleep is also a fairly common symbol for death, a possibility that can lead us to some interesting things to think about.

This is what the poem simply says (your Actualville). However, the ambiguity of this final quatrain implies much more (Othertown).

Remember … unlike the rest of the quatrains in the poem, this final quatrain does not repeat the pattern of a third line with a different rhyming sound;

instead, it keeps the same rhyming sound in all four lines– AND it repeats the whole line.

That repetition is important! It potentially changes the tone, implying such things as weariness, worry and concern, and, possibly, something sinister and dangerous.

HOWEVER, THE LINES DO NOT SAY THESE THINGS OR MEAN THESE THINGS; THE REPETETITION IMPLIES THESE THINGS!

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.

First, we can think of sleep symbolically as death. Sleep as a symbol for death is commonly found in the literatures of the world.

Death is, after all, the Big Sleep. Winter is often symbolized as death as well.

From that potential symbolism, we can infer that he has many miles in his life to go before he dies, and since he has obligations to keep, he has no time for watching snow fall in the woods(as lovely as it may be)

Further, stopping in the middle of the woods on a freezing night is potentially dangerous. One could die. He could fall asleep during his journey the rest of the way home (and he would then die as well).

HOWEVER, THE LINES DO NOT SAY THESE THINGS OR MEAN THESE THINGS; THE LANGUAGE IMPLIES THESE THINGS!

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.

Next, we should look back at the “woods are lovely, dark and deep.” We can choose to consider the following-----

lovely  beautiful, appealing, alluring AND that loveliness is

(a) dark  which also has possible implications of being sinister and dangerous AND (b) deep  which has an implication of being mysterious and thus, potentially,

somewhat dangerous, etc. -----

then we can infer that loveliness itself might be alluring and appealing, but it has its own dangers.

For example, to stop and watch the woods fill up with snow can be a beautiful experience– but it comes with its dangers–

and from that we can infer that a life filled with the pursuit of those things we find beautiful and appealing can be dangerous (especially if we pursue them at the cost of

the promises we must keep).

One, in such an interpretation, might stop to watch something beautiful, but one must leave. Interestingly, the poet never states that he leaves to go fulfill his promises.

We are only left with the realization that he has a long way to go before he can sleep. And we might well wonder how long he chooses to remain and watch the dangerous

beauty of the woods filling up with snow

HOWEVER, THE LANGUAGE DOES NOT SAY THIS OR MEAN THIS; THE AMBIGUITY-- OF WHAT THE TEXT DOES SAY-- IMPLIES THESE THINGS

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.