Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Background

Frost wrote the poem in June 1922 at his house in Shaftsbury, Vermont. He had been up the entire night writing the long poem "New Hampshire" from the poetry collection of the same name, and had finally finished when he realized morning had come. He went out to view the sunrise and suddenly got the idea for "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". He wrote the new poem "about the snowy evening and the little horse as if I'd had a hallucination" in just "a few minutes without strain."

Analysis

The text of the poem reflects the thoughts of a lone wagon driver (the narrator), on the night of the winter solstice, "the darkest evening of the year", pausing at dusk in his travel to watch snow falling in the woods. It ends with him reminding himself that, despite the loveliness of the view, "I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep."

Structure and style

The poem is written in iambic tetrameter in the Rubaiyat stanza created by Edward FitzGerald, who adopted the style from Hakim Omar Khayyam, the 12th-century Persian poet and mathematician. Each verse (save the last) follows an AABA rhyming scheme, with the following verse's A line rhyming with that verse's B line, which is a chain rhyme (another example is the terza rima used in Dante's Inferno). Overall, the rhyme scheme is AABA BBCB CCDC DDDD.

The poem begins with a moment of quiet introspection, which is reflected in the soft sounds of w's and th's, as well as double ll's. In the second stanza, harder sounds — like k and qu — begin to break the whisper. As the narrator's thought is disrupted by the horse in the third stanza, a hard g is used.

Usage

In politics

In the early morning of November 23, 1963, Sid Davis of Westinghouse Broadcasting reported on the arrival of President John F. Kennedy's casket at the White House. Since Frost was one of the President's favorite poets, Davis concluded his report with a passage from this poem, being overcome with emotion as he signed off.

At the funeral of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, on October 3, 2000, his eldest son, Justin, rephrased the last stanza of this poem in his eulogy: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. He has kept his promises and earned his sleep."

Frost's poem, and specifically its last stanza, was featured prominently in U.S. President Joe Biden's 2008 autobiography Promises to Keep, the name of which is derived from the poem's third-from-last line.

Adaptations

The poem was set to music by Randall Thompson as part of Frostiana.

The American composer Eric Whitacre first set this poem to music in 2000; due to a legal dispute with the Frost estate over the use of the poem, he engaged his friend, poet Charles Silvestri, to write alternative lyrics. The result was Sleep, one of their most celebrated collaborations. In January 2019 the Frost poem entered the public domain, finally allowing Whitacre to perform the piece as it was originally composed.

Modern media

The poem inspired the song 'The Woods' by San Fermin, as seen in the lyrics and rhyme scheme.

The last stanza of the poem is used as a plot device in the 1977 spy film Telefon. The words are used as a spoken code phrase that activates brainwashed Soviet sleeper agents in the United States and makes them carry out acts of sabotage.

The last stanza of the poem is used as a plot device in Quentin Tarantino's 2007 movie Death Proof.

References

References

1. "Robert Frost: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"".
2. (2001). "The Robert Frost Encyclopedia". Greenwood Publishing.
3. Frost, Carol. "Sincerity and Inventions: On Robert Frost". [[Academy of American Poets]].
4. Poirier, Richard. (1977). "Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing". [[Oxford University Press]].
5. Oliver, Mary. (1994). "A Poetry Handbook". Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
6. "My Brush with History - "We Heard the Shots …": Aboard the Press Bus in Dallas 40 Years Ago".
7. (February 2024). "President Kennedy Has Been Shot: Experience The Moment-to-Moment Account of The Four Days That Changed America". Sourcebooks.
8. (October 3, 2000). "Justin Trudeau's eulogy". [[CBC Radio]].
9. Dakss, Brian. (August 1, 2007). "Joe Biden's 'Promises To Keep'". [[CBS News]].
10. (1965). "Frostiana: Seven Country Songs". E.C. Schirmer Music.
11. Whitacre, Eric. (2024). "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Night: Composer's note".