Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Kelsey Morgan

10 February 2014

Eng 495 ESM MW 12:30

Prof Wexler

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

            Someone once said: “the best way out is always through” (“Robert Frost Quotes”). The man who said this is a man of high popularity, great success, and an understated ability to connect, through poetry, humans to their raw, honest emotions. Basically Poet Lauriat, Robert Frost filled the hearts of Americans with very simple poems that held within them heavy, usually melancholy, ideas. Frost believes that the “best way out is always through” and does this through his poetry. His poetry was a way out for him and people like him who were burdened by life. In his poem “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”, Frost reveals his struggle with depression through his rhythm, his imagery, and his euphemisms.

            Robert Frost has this ability to capture his audience in to a solemn, lonely, ponderous state that leaves one silent and satisfied through his entrancing rhythm. It has long been debated whether he was a Modernist or a Romantic with successful arguments on both sides. Many argue, however, that he was a “turn of the century poet”, which meant that he had a mixture of different poetry forms to play with. “Though his career fully spans the modern period and though it is impossible to speak of him as anything other than a modern poet,” writes James M. Cox, “it is difficult to place him in the main tradition of modern poetry.” (The Poetry Foundation) Frost repeatedly stays in a traditional form of structure, arguably, so that “they [can] liberate him from the experimentalist’s burden” (The Poetry Foundation). People knew this clean meter and rhyme and he felt with form, it would allow the writer and reader to be more honest. His use of a four stanza structure with a clear AABA rhyming scheme allows for one to get lost in the poem and use the very familiar meter to submerge themselves. This also makes the poem very simple. It is extremely understated- something of which Frost excels at doing in a very poignant way. The slow simple cadence of this poem captures the moment that is being talked about. It conveys a serene, simple, calming state of mind that gets juxtaposed with the overwhelming sense of depression in the poem that gets revealed. It reveals that this “romantic” explanation of nature is not what it seems and the poem is actually very complex and has a serious issue embedded in it.

            The form of this poem may seem easy; however, it is rather very clever. It has four almost identical stanzas with an iambic stress and an AABA rhyming scheme. Despite this simple form, the B line is a premonition of the next rhymed word in the following stanza. For example, in the first stanza, the unrhymed word is “here” and in the next stanza the rhymed words are “queer”, “near”, and “year”. He does this with each stanza. This is not that easy especially as he uses a vernacular of English. He does not switch the syntax around to make the rhyming easier but, in fact, speaks as one would day to day. (The Poetry Fundation) This, indeed, makes this simple form complex, which alludes to the content of the poem also being more complex that what it seems.

            The imagery that fills this poem is one that easily accesses the reader’s mind and allows for connection. The first stanza starts off with the narrator being introduced just after the situation started. This suggests that the reader has caught him in the middle of something. It begs the question: “What was happening before?” “Where was he traveling from?” With this in mind, the understanding of him having responsibilities that he is, for the time being, ignoring becomes much more plausible. “He will not see me stopping here/ To watch his woods fill up with snow” has so much meaning packed into it. The man who owns this house is not here because he is living his life full of responsibilities. This can be argued as the narrator taking time to appreciate nature, whereas, the owner has become to caught up in life to really enjoy it, however, in the context of the rest of the poem, the second argument is stronger. The second argument suggests that the narrator is the one who needs help, as he is the one being drawn into the darkness and the owner is living his full life. Throughout the poem, words like: “frozen”, “”darkest evening of the year”, “mistake”, “wind”, “downing flake”, and “dark and deep” come up. In many cases the woods suggest adventure, beauty, and grandness, but in this poem it is a dark unknown that is calling him away from his duties in life and trying to pull him in by putting a spell on him by being so calm. Another aspect of imagery that suggests depression is that he is in someone else’s woods. He is not satisfied with his own property- or life (Rice). He may be having a mid-life crisis and the horse is the one who tries to shake him out of his eminent demise- his “mistake”. One last imagery Frost uses is setting up his situation between a frozen lake and dark woods. H. William Rice, author of a commentary on this poem, says: “For the person who is depressed, the somber winter landscape mirrors the dark, frozen world inside. It could seem as if one has finally gotten to the heart of life itself, and there is nothing there.” All of this imagery packed into one poem is what gives the seemingly serene setting such overwhelming emotion. It makes one think, “something is wrong here, it is too quiet.”

            Frost’s use of euphemisms really brings together the whole idea of his understated style both in the language of the poem as well as the structure. There are two great euphemisms here. The first one is in the last stanza. When he finally breaks away from the spell the woods have cast on him, he says: “But I have promises to keep/ And miles to go before I sleep/ And miles to go before I sleep”. This leaves great ambiguity for the reader to read into and I think this is where Frost is a genius. It allows for people from every walk to connect with this poem. Whether the repetition of the last line is simple to convince him or something else anyone can relate. The euphemism comes in the reading of the two “sleeps” being different. The first line is talking about sleep in the literal sense. He has many miles to go before he gets back home to go to bed. The second “sleep” is the euphemism for death or more likely, suicide. Rice comments on this: “Camus wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide." Hamlet sums the issue up in six words: "To be or not to be." Faced with this ultimate question-if that is indeed the way one reads Frost's winter landscape-the narrator of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" does exactly what my father did: He decides to look away from the dark woods and move on (Rice).” This poem really is a celebratory poem. The narrator, faced with an opportunity to just go into the darkness, something that entices him, chooses to live his life and return home. He knows he has miles of his life left to live before he dies. The second euphemism is that this poem is an epigram, which is a lot like a euphemism. An epigram is defined as: “a short, often satirical poem dealing concisely with a single subject and usually ending with a witty or ingenious turn of thought (“epigram”).” The poem as a whole is very understated and then in the end Frost lends a way for one to see what he is truly getting at. The entirety of the poem is a euphemism for contemplating suicide and overcoming it. It really is a small victory on the road of life when one deals with depression.

            Robert Frost is one of the most famed poets in history for a reason. The reason is his ability to use such simple forms of poetry to reach the deepest part of his readers’ hearts and to challenge them to think about life in a particular way. Through his enchanting rhythm, poignant imagery, and beautiful euphemisms, he makes Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening a poem to be remembered. It challenges life itself.

Works Cited

"epigram." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 06 Feb. 2014. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/epigram>.

Rice, H. William. "Sharing Those Woods, Dark and Deep." The Chronicle of Higher Education 59.28 (2013). General OneFile. Web. 6 Feb. 2014.

“Robert Frost.” : The Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 2014. Web. 05 Feb. 2014.

"Robert Frost Quotes." Robert Frost Quotes (Author of The Poetry of Robert Frost). N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Feb. 2014.