 Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

 Woods

Symbol Analysis
The woods in this poem are something to write home about. Our speaker can't get enough of
them, telling us that "the woods are lovely, dark and deep" (13), as though he were
hypnotized. The woods must be all that and a bag of chips, because our speaker is compelled
to stop and stare at them on the freezing, dark winter evening. There's a mysterious element
to these woods as well, and we get the sense that the speaker is not alone, even though he is
very much by himself. Whenever we see woods in literature, we almost automatically see
them in contrast to civilization. If you've read The Scarlet Letter, think about the woods
Hester Prynne frequents. We also think of woods as being mazelike and full of hidden
obstacles, like the Fire Swamp in The Princess Bride (watch out for the Rodents Of Unusual
Size and the quicksand). These are some pretty intense woods, so feel free to interpret them
how you will. We will offer a few ideas below.

 Lines 1, 4, 7, 13: Some interpret the woods as an extended metaphor for death.
 Line 4: Here we see woods as a clear and crisp image as our speaker describes them
filling up with snow.

 The Natural World

Our speaker is digging the natural world. Picture him hanging out with his horse, between a
frozen lake and the edge of the woods, while the snows falls gently all around him. The ideas
of the village, of a farmhouse, or of the promises he must keep are not nearly as appetizing to
our speaker as the cold beauty of the world around him. There's something very lulling about
the "easy wind and downy flake" (12), and we get the sense that the natural world is pretty
compelling and pretty good at convincing our speaker to forget about civilization. Nature is
powerful in this poem.

 Lines 6-8: With these lines, we get a crystal clear image of the snowy woods and
frozen lake at night.
 Line 11: We can almost hear the sound of the wind in the alliteration of "sound's the
sweep."
 Line 13: While the fact that the woods are "lovely, dark and deep" might not seem
visually helpful, this description actually helps us visualize the image of the woods
even more clearly.

 Others
Alone as alone can be. That's our speaker on this snowy evening. Why then, do we feel like
he's not alone? Is it his little horse that seems to have a mind of its own, is it the landowner
who is snug in his cozy house in the cozy village, or is it the presence of something else
entirely?

 Line 2: The "village" can be interpreted as a symbol for society and civilization.
 Line 5: Horses have thoughts? We knew it all along. The horse is personified in this
line.
 Line 6: Farmhouses may not be the most hoppin' places in the world, but they do
usually involve people. Because of this, the farmhouse that our speaker mentions
seems like a symbol for society and civilization.
 Line 10: Giving his harness bells a shake, the horse is personified once more as he
asks "if there is some mistake."
 Lines 15-16: "Sleep" is a solitary activity, no? In these lines, "sleep" could be
interpreted as a metaphor for death.

Analysis: Form and Meter

You may or may not have noticed that "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" has a nice
ring to it, almost like a song. There's rhythm and there's reason, and even some rhyming in
this poem. Composed of four four-lined stanzas, this poem is a classic example of the
Rubaiyat Stanza. Do not be scared by the number of vowels in that word. "Rubaiyat" is a
beautiful Persian word for "quatrain," which means a stanza composed of four lines. The
Rubaiyat Stanza has a rhyme scheme of AABA. Let's take a look:

Whose woods these are I think I know. A

His house is in the village though; A
He will not see me stopping here B
To watch his woods fill up with snow. A

My little horse must think it queer B

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

He gives his harness bells a shake C

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

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. D

But I have promises to keep, D
And miles to go before I sleep, D
And miles to go before I sleep. D
What are all of those strange letters in bold, you ask? Well, we (along with other scholars)
like to pick poems apart and look at how they work and at how they sound. When poems
contain lines that rhyme with one another, we like to map out these rhyme schemes, so that
we can see what words are rhyming with each other. You'll notice that the first two lines and
the last line of each stanza rhyme together, whereas the pesky third line introduces a new
rhyme altogether. When the next stanza begins, three of the four lines rhyme with the third
line of the previous stanza.

Have we thoroughly confused you? Take a look at "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" (1-4). In this case, "know," "though," and "snow" all rhyme together, but
"here" is like the ugly duckling of the group, not fitting in. Fortunately, "here" rhymes with
the first, second, and fourth lines in the next stanza. That's just the way a Rubaiyat stanza
works. You'll notice that there's an exception to this rhyming business in the final stanza. In
this grand finale of a stanza, each line rhymes together – no new rhyme is introduced. In this
way, we know the poem has come to an end.

Let's talk about rhythm. If you've heard about or read any Shakespeare, the word "iambic
pentameter" might ring a bell. Shakespeare liked to write most of the lines in his plays with a
particular rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables. His lines usually have ten syllables, or
five pairs of syllables (pentameter). Frost's lines in "Stopping by Woods of a Snowy
Evening," however, have eight syllables. Frost uses iambic tetrameter (think Tetras=four).
Because it has a regular rhythm, and because each line only has eight syllables, the poem
moves along at a brisk pace. It's a very neat and tidy poem. Look at the syllables in the first
line (stressed syllables are in bold font): "whose woods these are I think I know." The
iambic (unstressed/stressed) nature of these lines is what allows us to hear this poem in the
way that we've been hearing it all of our life – in that slightly sing-songy way.

Call us crazy, but we went ahead and counted every word in this poem: 108. Out of those 108
words, only 20 have more than one syllable. In other words, this poem is built mostly of
monosyllabic words. What does that mean exactly? Well, we're not quite sure, but
monosyllabic words do help to keep up the pace, and they also seem to make the poem sound
simpler than it really is. No fancy schmancy, New York Times crossword puzzle words clutter
up this poem; and yet, we could argue about it's meaning until the cows come home. It's that
multi-dimensional.

Analysis: Speaker
 BACK
 NEXT

He's your typical dude. You know, the one riding his horse though the countryside around
5:00pm near the end of December, taking a breather to watch the woods fill up with snow.
Wait just a minute. Who is this guy? Well, for starters, he is slightly lacking in the confidence
department, as the first line suggests: "Whose woods these are I think I know." Why can't he
just say, "I know whose woods these are?" Instead, he has to go and invert his sentence and
tell us that he thinks he knows what's going on.

Second, our speaker is one of those people who just loves nature, who can't get enough of it.
He is so taken by the sight of the woods that he doesn't quite know what to do with himself
and almost gives up on his village life, his home, and his family, in order to, well, we're not
sure exactly what.

It's right about then (when he has to remind himself of the promises he has to keep and of the
miles he has to go before he can sleep), that we get the sense that something might be awry.
Perhaps, instead of being a nature lover, our speaker is philosophical and reflective. Maybe
he's one of those people who is always in his head. If that's so, he may just be reflecting on
something deeper and darker, like death. Perhaps it's the end of the year, people all around
him are getting their New Year's resolutions ready, and he is trying to figure out what life is
all about. Perhaps he's thinking, "Am I all about my life in the warm, cozy village with the
warm, cozy villagers, or should I try to find more meaning and feel closer to a higher power
by chilling with nature?" Either way, our speaker is a very thoughtful (and perhaps slightly
depressed) guy.

Third, we wouldn't totally blame you if you began to question our speaker's sanity. He seems
like a normal guy at first, one who's communicating in a poetic kind of way, but then we
realize that he's trying to guess his horse's thoughts and that he kind of wants to hang out all
night and look at the woods. There's something in that first line too that suggests he's not
thinking normally ("Whose woods these are I think I know"), and he seems way too paranoid
about getting caught trespassing on someone else's property. If it's snowing, it must be cold.
If it's evening, it must be dark. If there is no farmhouse close by, there's no one to help him
out or give him a place to stay. We could imagine taking a break to appreciate the scenery in
the middle of the day, but it's the evening, which means that temperatures must be dropping
and that the road home must be difficult to see.

Finally, yes, our speaker may be a bit strange for trying to decode his horse's thoughts, but
this effort also tells us that he's a caring, empathetic kind of guy who spends a lot of time
with his horse and who loves it very much. He wants to know how his horse is feeling. We
get the sense that if the horse were not with him, our speaker might not make the decision to
continue home right away. It's as though the horse reminds our speaker of the "promises" he
has made to those in the village and reminds him of the life he has in the village.

Analysis: Setting
We imagine it's a dark evening, perhaps around 5:00pm, near the winter solstice (late
December). Although our speaker doesn't tell us why he's out, we picture our speaker has
been traveling across the countryside to pay a family visit or a business visit in a town ten or
fifteen miles away from his own. Perhaps he's stayed longer than he would have liked, and
now he's caught in the dying light of evening. Our speaker doesn't have any flashlights,
floodlights, or torches with him, and so the only light around is from the dipping sun and the
brilliant white of snow.

He travels across a little road used by villagers that is quickly disappearing, and he arrives
upon a clearing that is bordered on one side by a glassy dark lake and on the other side by
deep, dark woods. The darkness contrasted with the white of the snow is startling, even in the
dying light. The scene is beautiful but lonely. There are no houses nearby that he can see. His
small hometown (a village) is still miles and miles away, and he can't hear a single thing
other than the snow, the wind, and occasionally his horse's bells. He is completely alone.

Analysis: Sound Check

 BACK
 NEXT

Think kindergarten recess meets a funeral hymn. Creepy? Yes, we know. But hear us out.
With an unusual and uncommon rhyme scheme (check out "Form and Meter" section) and
with only eight syllables to every line, this poem at first sounds like a little ditty that we
might sing after playing a rousing game of Ring around the Rosy. However, just as we know
Ring around the Rosy has connections to the outbreak of the Black Plague in 1665 England,
we begin to suspect that "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" might also have a darker
underbelly.

Frost was all about the sounds his poems made (check out "In a Nutshell"), believing that
there is as much sense in the sounds of words as in the meaning of the words. Therefore, we
must pay very close attention to the noises of this poem and to what it makes our mouths do
when we read it aloud. Have you read it aloud yet? We strongly suggest you do. It's really
fun. Read it aloud right now, and pay close attention to the way your mouth moves. Report
back. We'll wait.

Before we begin our tour of the sounds in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," we
want to introduce you to a few key terms: fricatives, sibilants, glides, and glottals. No, these
are not innovative swear words or new nicknames for your little brother; these four terms
come from the world of phonetics (the study of human speech sounds), and they are used to
describe ways in which the human mouth makes certain sounds.

A fricative is any consonant that requires the use of lips, teeth, or tongue to utter it. A
fricative usually involves the interruption of airflow as in ffffffff or vvvvvvvvvvvv. A sibilant is
a kind of fricative, but it usually involves the pointiest part of your front teeth to make sounds
(i.e. ssssssssssss or zzzzzzzzzzzz). A glide is a sound that is almost a vowel, but that acts like a
runway to glide into a vowel (i.e. what, where, you, yeah). A glottal is a noise that is made in
the back of the throat, far, far away from the lips (i.e. gggg or kkkkk). There are lots of other
terms in the world of phonetics that describe the sounds we make and how we make them,
but we're going to focus on these four terms for the moment.

What does all of this crazy phonetic talk have to do with this poem? Well, certain sounds are
more pleasing to our human ears than others. Certain sounds are more audible than others.
And certain sounds set us on edge. Humans use words and the sounds of words to influence
one another. Frost uses his sounds to tell a story and to help set the mood. In the first stanza
alone, there are seven w sounds: whose, woods, know, will, watch, woods, with, snow. It's a
very glide-happy stanza, and our lips get a lot of action. We don't know about you, but the
"w" sound is very gentle and very lulling. There is only one glottal stop in this stanza:
"think." All other sounds happen in the front of our mouth, out in the open with nothing to
hide.

Watch what happens in the second stanza when your mouth must articulate, "Between the
woods and frozen lake/ The darkest evening of the year" (5-6). We begin those lines with
some pleasing w sounds in "between" and "woods," and then things get hairy when we have
two glottals in a row with "lake" and "darkest." The glottals literally trip us up a bit as we
have to reach all the way to the back of our throats in order to make the sounds. The k sound
also seems like the sound ice makes when it breaks, reminding us of the setting. Glottal
sounds are sticky.

Now look at stanza three, when the horse hopes to get his master's attention: "He gives his
harness bells a shake/ To ask if there is some mistake" (9-10). Our throats get a workout with
these glottal noises, and they seem to break the lines up into little chunks.

In the next two lines, however, things change: "the only other sounds the sweep/ Of easy
wind and downy flake." Are these entrancing, or what? Notice how much action your teeth
get with "the," "other," "sounds," "sweep," "easy," wind," "downy." The alliteration of
"sounds," "sweep," and "easy" creates a little hissing noise, perhaps like the sound of the easy
wind. The word "flake" causes the backs of our throats to stick, like snow to the ground.

Analysis: What's Up With the Title?

 BACK
 NEXT

The title sounds to us like it would work nicely as a title for a painting, and we can easily
imagine (even before reading the poem) gazing at a framed oil painting in a carefully lit
museum that shows a figure paused in a dark and snowy landscape. The "-ing" ending to the
word "stopping" (making it, in fancy grammatical terms, a gerund) gives us the sense of the
immediate present, as though we are just now watching our speaker stop to take a gander at
the woods. This "-ing" ending also makes us feel as if things are in motion, and as if the
speaker is in the middle of a journey or task.

If we were to award a gold medal to the word in this title with the juiciest meaning, the word
"by" would be the lucky winner. When we think of woods, we imagine being in them,
surrounded by trees. However, our speaker is not in the midst of a great forest: he's actually
just next to the woods and staring at the trees. Staring at woods strikes us as just a wee bit
strange. We can imagine hanging out with trees, because trees are cool. But our speaker is on
the periphery of the woods; he's separate from them. Before we begin the poem, Frost makes
us aware of the fact that the speaker is not inside the woods, but is rather beside them. And
that strikes us as just plain interesting.

Analysis: Calling Card

 BACK
 NEXT
 X

Nature, Quiet, and Absence

First of all, can we just point out what a cool name Robert Frost has? If that's not an ideal
calling card, than we don't know what is. Imagine registering him for a driver's license or
something:

Shmoop: Name?
Frost: Robert Frost.
Shmoop: Occupation?
Frost: I write poems about frost.
Shmoop: Really?
Frost: Yes.

OK, so maybe he doesn't write specifically about frost, but this poem sure has lots to do with
frozen things. Robert Frost is known as the quintessential New England poet, and he often
muses about the New England landscape and about nature. He lived on a farm for a good
chunk of his life (by the way, you can visit Frost Farm if you are ever in Derry, New
Hampshire). Things like trees, snow, walls, fences, tools, apples, shovels, and other farm-like
items surface all of the time in his poems. He's interested in everyday tasks, and he likes to
ruminate on how cool nature is. Can we blame him?

You might notice that Frost's language is also very everyday and colloquial. He hopes to
capture the sounds and rhythms of natural human chatter in his poems, and he isn't too
concerned with using formal, archaic, or distant language. That being said, many people have
criticized Frost for not addressing modernity in his poems. There's an old school feeling to
his work that some people love and that others do not.

There also often happens to be an absence of people in Frost's poems, thus creating a slightly
spooky undertone. You'll know you are in a Frost poem when you feel like you should be
looking over your shoulder, or when you get the sense that someone might be watching you.

Analysis: Tough-O-Meter
 BACK
 NEXT

(2) Sea Level

Just as you can slice a pie in a million different ways, you can consider as many
interpretations of this poem as you like. In fact, this poem demands that you look at it from
multiple angles. That's the beauty of Frost. But don't let the limitless possibilities trip you up.
This happens to be one of the most beloved, oft recited, oft quoted, oft referenced poems in
America (yes, we just use the word "oft" three times), and it doesn't mind at all if you choose
not to go digging for underlying meaning. You have free rein to enjoy the beautiful snow and
the peaceful quiet.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Themes
Isolation "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is a lonely poem, for our speaker finds himself
far away from any other human being. He kind of digs this aloneness, however, and is glad that no
one is there to watch him. We get the feeling that he'd rather be all by his lonesome in the freezing
cold than back in the village. Nature helps make things even lonelier, too, for it happens to be
freezing cold, snowing, and dark out there.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Theme of Choices
 BACK
 NEXT

The speaker in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" makes several choices, many of
which his dearly beloved horse does not agree with. The biggest choice that he wrestles with
is whether to return to the warmth and safety of the village or to stay and watch the woods fill
up with snow. Our speaker does seem to have a hard time making his decision. He ultimately
decides to return home, but it seems to take all of his willpower.

 BACK
 NEXT

We're not going to lie, nature seems pretty darn scary in this poem. Not scary like it's going to
throw thunderbolts at our speaker or let hungry tigers lose on him, but scary in that it is
mysterious and even rather seductive. Our speaker is almost enticed into staying and
watching the woods fill up with snow, but if he stays too long, we've got to believe that he
might freeze to death, catch a really bad cold, or forget his way home. Nature is a beautiful
siren in this poem, compelling our speaker to hang out in spite of the dangerous
consequences.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Theme of Society and Class
 BACK
 NEXT

We don't get much information about where our speaker comes from or about the nearby
village in this poem, but we do know that he's far away from civilization. We also know that
the man who owns the woods lives in town in a house. From this little information, we can
deduce that if you own things (like the owner of the woods does), then you live in the midst
of society. Our speaker is not so concerned with society. In fact, society to him is about as
appetizing as cod liver oil. He'd rather be alone with nature. To us, the village sounds quaint,
cute, and warm. To our speaker, the village represents his obligations, responsibilities, and
promises.
Summary

On the surface, this poem is simplicity itself. The speaker is stopping by some woods on a
snowy evening. He or she takes in the lovely scene in near-silence, is tempted to stay longer,
but acknowledges the pull of obligations and the considerable distance yet to be traveled
before he or she can rest for the night.

Form

The poem consists of four (almost) identically constructed stanzas. Each line is iambic, with
four stressed syllables:

Within the four lines of each stanza, the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme. The third line
does not, but it sets up the rhymes for the next stanza. For example, in the third stanza,
queer,near, and year all rhyme, but lake rhymes with shake,mistake, and flake in the
following stanza.

Trending Articles

Powered By

The notable exception to this pattern comes in the final stanza, where the third line rhymes
with the previous two and is repeated as the fourth line.

Do not be fooled by the simple words and the easiness of the rhymes; this is a very difficult
form to achieve in English without debilitating a poem’s content with forced rhymes.

Commentary

This is a poem to be marveled at and taken for granted. Like a big stone, like a body of water,
like a strong economy, however it was forged it seems that, once made, it has always been
there. Frost claimed that he wrote it in a single nighttime sitting; it just came to him. Perhaps
one hot, sustained burst is the only way to cast such a complete object, in which form and
content, shape and meaning, are alloyed inextricably. One is tempted to read it, nod quietly in
recognition of its splendor and multivalent meaning, and just move on. But one must write
essays. Or study guides.

<<