{"id":4595,"date":"2006-03-07T10:24:23","date_gmt":"2006-03-07T15:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=4595"},"modified":"2022-10-09T22:52:56","modified_gmt":"2022-10-10T02:52:56","slug":"snowy-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=4595","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday to Snowy Woods"},"content":{"rendered":"

I learned that today, in 1923<\/a>, Robert Frost’s “Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening” was published in the New Republic<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Here’s the story of the composition of that poem – which I think is just GREAT:<\/p>\n

Though it’s a poem about winter, Frost wrote the first draft on a warm morning in the middle of June. The night before he had stayed up working at his kitchen table on a long, difficult poem called “New Hampshire” (1923). He finally finished it, and then looked up and saw that it was morning. He’d never worked all night on a poem before. Feeling relieved at the work he’d finished, he went outside and watched the sunrise.<\/p>\n

But while he was outside, he suddenly got an idea for a new poem. So he rushed back inside his house and wrote “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” in just a few minutes. He said he wrote most of the poem almost without lifting his pen off the page.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening <\/b><\/p>\n

Whose woods these are I think I know.
\nHis house is in the village, though;
\nHe will not see me stopping here
\nTo watch his woods fill up with snow.<\/p>\n

My little horse must think it queer
\nTo stop without a farmhouse near
\nBetween the woods and frozen lake
\nThe darkest evening of the year.<\/p>\n

He gives his harness bells a shake
\nTo ask if there is some mistake.
\nThe only other sound’s the sweep
\nOf easy wind and downy flake.<\/p>\n

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
\nBut I have promises to keep,
\nAnd miles to go before I sleep,
\nAnd miles to go before I sleep.<\/p>\n

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In my humble opinion, it is that last stanza that makes this a truly great<\/b> poem. Before that, although the imagery is beautiful and evocative – we are in a rather prosaic world, the world of the everyday – with neighbors and villages and harness bells – objects that cement us to the physical world.<\/p>\n

But in the last stanza, Frost pulls his lens abruptly back … going into the universal and timeless.<\/p>\n

Jesus, it’s moving.<\/p>\n

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