Frost's poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", seems to be a simple story of a man and his horse. It portrays beautiful imagery with an enjoyable rhythm and rhyming scheme. Taking a second look at this poem may bring a more complex curiosity about what Frost is exactly trying to achieve through his words. It is apparent in the breakdown of the poem that new meanings and revelations are to be found. This is seen by relating almost all of his statements to each stanza and line. Robert Frost's aesthetic philosophy about "Stopping by Woods" gives a more penetrating view into his work.
"It [the poem] finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad." (Frost 985). The
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1 & 3) It seems as though the character is delighted and almost childish, sneaking around on someone's property. As the poem progresses, "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." (l. 13-16) the character seems to shift into a more mature mood and use more wisdom. He realizes that as much as he would like to stop and rest, he has prior commitments and recognizes their importance.
It is important to look for the obscure meanings underneath Robert Frost's words. He explains this in the aesthetic breakdown: "It should be the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can... But it is a trick poem..." (Frost 985). To simply look at the poem it may seem to depict a story of a man walking through the woods on a snowy night. To discover the meanings of the seemingly straightforward phrases, questions must be asked and sentences must be challenged. The walk that the character is taking may be a metaphor for a journey through life. "He will not see me stopping here</em> to watch the woods fill up with snow" (l. 3 & 4). This may mean that the character is stopping and reflecting on life. The poem is introspective and retrospective at the same time. Frost concurs with this in this aesthetic when he says: "It must be a revelation or a series of revelations, as much for the poet as for the reader." (Frost 985).
When Frost says "It must be more felt than seen ahead
In the fourth and final stanza Frost uses the riming of all four sentences to draw the reader into the climax of the poem, “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”. This grouping leads the reader to feel that
Self-discovery is often accompanied by internal metacognitive dialogue due to its ability to allow individuals to re-evaluate their outlook on life and develop a better understanding of the world. Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods’, his 1922 lyric poem provides a pre-eminent example of an internal monologue. Use of first person present tense language allows for the reader to relish the quiet splendour of the dark woods and ponder, if only for a moment, the allure of escaping indefinitely from the exhausting world of people and promises. The confronting and emotionally significant discovery of the persona’s morbid attraction to oblivion is conveyed through the furtive tone in the first stanza “He will not see me stopping here/ to watch this wood fill up with snow” suggesting a feeling of delight that may be associated with the deep, dark woods. Potent connotations of the words ‘dark’,
The two poems “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Acquainted with the Night” written by Robert Frost are very similar to each other because of the simplistic form of language used and the uses of metaphors. When we first read the poem, it looks like an ordinary poem but once we go in depth and understand the meaning, it becomes so much more. Both of the poem has a very dark, gloomy and lonely setting with a really mysterious tone. There are different metaphors used in each poem to symbolize death; “Sleep” in “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Night” in “Acquainted with the Night.” The characters in the two poem are both in a journey and has come
The Use of Literary Devices in Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
The speaker's depression stems mainly from his unwanted responsibility and feeling of regret. The basic conflict in the poem, which is resolved in the last stanza, is between an attraction toward the woods and the drudgery of life and responsibility outside of the woods. "And miles to go before I sleep,/ And miles to go before I sleep" (line 15-16).
Last stanza of the poem talks about the emptiness that is so overwhelming that even when Frost looks up to the sky, all that he could see or feel is still loneliness and emptiness. But then Frost mentions that the emptiness or loneliness that he fears the most isn’t the one that exist on
In the next four lines, the speaker goes on to express the isolation of the woods and on the winter solstice, or “the darkest evening of the year”. The speaker lays the responsibility of saying that it is strange to be her on his little horse who “must think it queer”. The speaker is in isolation in the growing dark, yet he stops and stays in the lonely woods. The line, “between the woods and frozen lake” gives a sense of being trapped and having no escape. He is ensnared between the ever growing foreboding of the woods and an icy expanse that could prove deadly. Also, throughout history, the winter solstice has been a night of superstitions, of fear and loathing. It seems strange that with all of this, the man still desires to be alone in a dark wood when he has a long way to travel yet before he gets home. In a way, the speaker is intentionally isolating himself from society.
Frost also uses the trees in this poem to represent a way to get away from the cares and trials of life on Earth. He talks of getting away and coming back to start over as if climbing “towards heaven”. He desires to be free from it all, but then he says that he is afraid that the fates might misunderstand and take him away to never return. This is like most of us today. We want to go to Heaven, but we don’t want to die to get there.
In this poem, I believe the theme is that you have to jump at an opportunity when you get it, or you may never get that opportunity again. Moving on to the tone of the poem, I believe that it is wistful, and that the speaker might be looking back on his days, and realizing that he taking the other road might have made all of the difference in his life. There is very good diction in this poem, as some words express Frost’s feeling more than other’s would’ve. For example, in the line “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” (1), Frost really emphasizes the two roads separating from each other. In another line “In leaves no step had trodden black” (12), trodden is a more appropriate than another word such as crushed or pulverized, because it is the past form of trod, or to step in something, and gives an image of human feet stepping on the freshly fallen leaves.
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is a very well know poem by Robert Frost. The poem appears to be very simple, but it has a hidden meaning to it. The simple words and rhyme scheme of the poem gives it an easy flow, which adds to the calmness of the poem. The rhyme scheme (aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd) and the rhythm (iambic tetrameter) give the poem a solid structure. The poem is about the speaker’s experience of stopping by the dark woods in the winter evening with his horse and admiring the beauty of the fresh fallen snow in the forest. Then, the speaker projects himself into the mind of his horse, speculating about his horse’s practical concerns and the horse
· But line 3 of stanza 1 becomes the rhyme sound for the first, second
The night symbolized death, and the walk was the person's journey to find their lost life. This poem was somewhat disturbing to me. I thought of a lost soul, thirsting to finish a mission that was not completed in life. Frost depicts death in a frightening manner with the contents of this piece of work.
Robert Frost also shows his touch of imagery in the poem, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”.
Like “The Road Not Taken”, in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, the speaker has to make a big decision in his life. He has to choose between isolation and social obligation. At first glance, this poem might denote stopping in the woods to escape the hustle and bustle of city life. Different symbols in this poem though reveal that stop in the poem could be referring to death. In this phrase “Between the woods and frozen lake”, the wood becomes a symbol of life where frozen lake signifies death. When the speaker reaches the woods, he finds a world offering perfect, quiet and solitude, existing side by side with the realization that there is also another world, a world of people and social obligation. Both
Poetry is a literary medium which often resonates with the responder on a personal level, through the subject matter of the poem, and the techniques used to portray this. Robert Frost utilises many techniques to convey his respect for nature, which consequently makes much of his poetry relevant to the everyday person. The poems “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ and “The mending wall” strongly illuminate Frost’s reverence to nature and deal with such matter that allows Frost to speak to ordinary people.