Frost’s Snow and Woods
Commentary on 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'
Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" seems simple, but its nuanced phrase, "And miles to go before I sleep," offers much about which to speculate.
First Stanza – Portrait of a Man and a Horse in the Snow
Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” paints a portrait of a man riding a horse (or perhaps the horse is pulling a buckboard-style wagon in which the man is riding), and he stops alongside the road next to a woods to watch the snow fall.
The poem is quite literal but also quite suggestive; for example, in the first stanza, the speaker makes a point of expressing the fact that the owner of the woods won’t see him, because the owner lives in the village. There is no indication of why this is important. Is he glad the owner won’t see him? If the owner could see him, would he not stop?
Second Stanza – “Darkest Evening of the Year”
In the second stanza, the speaker tells us what he thinks his horse must be thinking, and he decides that the horse must think this an odd thing to do with no house nearby, just a “woods and frozen lake” while it is getting dark, because this is the “darkest evening of the year.”
So we wonder why he speculates about what the horse thinks. Does he really care that horse thinks it is odd? Or is it the speaker who really thinks it odd and therefore projects his thoughts onto the horse?
Third Stanza – Rattling his Harness
However, in the third stanza, we have at least a partial answer to our question about why he thinks the horse thinks it odd: the horse shakes his head and his harness rattles. But when the speaker explains the horse’s shaking head, he again projects his thoughts onto the horse: the speaker thinks the horse shook his head to “ask if there is some mistake.”
Again, we have wonder why the speaker thinks that the horse would rattle his harness to ask this. Then the speaker suddenly seems to be brought back to the scene by noticing that the only other sound he hears beside the horse’s harness is the soft wind and flakes of snow whirling about him.
Fourth Stanza – Miles to Go
In the final stanza, the speaker actually describes the scene as “lovely, dark and deep.” This is the only description of the woods. Most of the poem is taken up in speculation about who might see him or what the horse might think. But with line 13, we learn that the speaker simply thinks the woods are “lovely, dark and deep.”
In the final three lines, “But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep,” the speaker offers a reason why he should get going and stop dallying here by these woods. But the reason is wide open to interpretation from the most simple to the most sinister. Perhaps the speaker is simply saying he has to get home, because he has people waiting for him and things to do, and his home is many miles away.
The Nuanced Repetition – Another Tricky Poem?
But the repetition of “miles to go before I sleep” is intriguing; therefore, critics have scoured the poem to support the notion that the speaker of this poem would like to remain here and possibly commit suicide. If the speaker is contemplating suicide, he suddenly and inexplicably snaps out of that alluring thought back to his commitment to keep his promises.
The poem does suggest many questions: Why does the speaker mention that the owner of the woods won’t see him? Why does he speculate about what his horse must think? Why does he repeat the last line? Why did he stop in the first place? These questions cannot be answered by the poem, and because Robert Frost called his “The Road Not Taken” “a tricky poem,” one wonders if he also thought of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” as a tricky poem.
