Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening!
Robert Frost‘s 1922 poem ‘Stopping by woods on a snowy evening‘ contains important messages, but it is equally delightful to read it at face value. The text evokes powerful images in the mind. It is one of my favourites.
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
by
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.
The end
The poem in Frost's own handwriting! Courtesy rocksea. Copyright not known.
US Postage stamp of 1974
Feel free to suggest poems that celebrate nature and wildlife!
Credits – Michael Wassmer (France) for image (thru Wikimedia Commons). Wikipedia for links. Adam Smith Academy for the text.
Explore posts in the same categories: nature, poetry, postage stamps, Robert Frost
July 13, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Thanks for sharing!
July 14, 2009 at 7:00 am
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.
These lines were written on the wall of my school.
Thanks for sharing.
July 22, 2009 at 6:30 pm
This is one of my favorite poems. I have a scanned copy of it in Robert Frost’s own handwriting. May be I can find it and send it you sometime.
Roxy
July 23, 2009 at 4:01 am
Do share this interesting image. What’s the copyright status of it?
August 3, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Thanks rocksea for the Frost’s handwritten poem. It ornaments the post!
August 11, 2009 at 2:25 pm
yep! i knew! hehe
August 8, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Beautiful poem…love it
. TFS.
December 9, 2009 at 4:37 am
This is one poem I love. Every time I read these lines, my interpretation changes… Thanks for sharing
December 9, 2009 at 11:17 am
Please share these here for our benefit.
December 12, 2009 at 3:17 am
The first four lines of this poem..
a person leaves behind his beautiful woods to reside in the village. Far away from all this beauty, though he has the utmost right to enjoy nature’s magnificience, he cannot do so.
Does this not sound like so many of us… leaving behind our quaint native villages, hills or sometimes our motherland, we travel to cities or far away countries in search of greener pastures.
Nature has its own way… Man has created a system by which he thinks he can own lands, rivers and streams. But not mean everyone gets to enjoy the beauty of what they own or lock it away from others.. for he who thirsts for natures beauty knows that the entire world is his.
Not sure if I have selected the write words to pen down my thoughts… Thoughts inspired by this poem are so intense that I realize documenting interpretations have serious limitations.
December 15, 2009 at 7:13 am
This brings a thought to my mind. How many of us really enjoy what we are blessed with. Whether it is the things around us which Nature/God has given us free or the possessions we own. How many of us have unread books, unworn clothes, unused possessions.
This thought process sets you off on the idea of how life should be as espoused by Frost/Thoreau/Yeats.
Please also do read Yeats ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ on this blog.
December 10, 2009 at 5:37 pm
This is one of my favourite poem.
December 15, 2009 at 7:48 am
Nice of you to comment. Do enjoy some more nature poems on my blog. They are all listed on the page “Nature Poems’ (url below):
http://thebutterflydiaries.wordpress.com/complete-list-of-posts/nature-poems/
December 14, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Hi, I hope it’s okay with you if I borrow your post here? I belong to a group called eons and one of our challenges was to think of what “solitude means for us and the first thing I thought of was a snowy forest and the second thing I thought of was the Robert Frost Poem Well, I googled the powem because I was going to post the words first and then add my own photo…but then the very first photo I click on is your post and of course it was just exactly what I was thinking…so, I hope you don’t mind if I borrow it??? http://www.eons.com/groups/topic/1950143-Challenge-14-Solitude-?page=1
December 15, 2009 at 7:46 am
Absolutely. They are under Creative Commons. You need to attribute whatever you have taken to me with this blog post url.
I saw your eons.com link and I can recommend some more alternative nature poems from this blog which will work on the theme ‘solitude’:
Daffodils – Addlestrop – The Lake Isle of Innisfree
All the best.
January 2, 2011 at 12:50 pm
[...] Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening! July 2009 15 comments 5 [...]
April 26, 2011 at 3:13 pm
u know robert frost is great coz…….. he wrote sch a hearth-throb poem for us..i so glad
April 29, 2011 at 5:19 am
I feel like that too.
April 29, 2011 at 5:20 am
I feel that way too.