Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

FERMANDOSI ACCANTO A UN BOSCO IN UNA SERA DI NEVE

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.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

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.

Structure and Meter

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The poem consists of four stanzas, each with four lines. (A four-line stanza is called a quatrain.) Each line in the poem has eight syllables (or four feet). In each line, the first syllable is unstressed, the second is stressed, the third is unstressed, the fourth is stressed, and so on. Thus, the poem is in iambic tetrameter.

An iamb is a foot containing an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. A tetrameter is a line of poetry or verse containing four feet.

The following example—the first two lines of the poem–demonstrates the metric scheme. The unstressed syllables are in blue; the stressed are in red capitals. Over each pair of syllables is a number representing the foot. Also, a black vertical line separates the feet.

    .......1.......       .......2.....    .......3.............4 
Whose.WOODS|.these.ARE|.I.THINK.|.I.KNOW...........
    ....1...../......2...........3.......       ...4
His.HOUSE.|.is.IN| the.VILL|.age.THOUGH

Guy Rotella

The poem's formal qualities, while not obviously "experimental," also contribute to its balancing act. The closing repetition emphasizes the speaker's commitment to his responsibilities. It also emphasizes the repetitive tedium that makes the woods an attractive alternative to those responsibilities. This leaves open the question of just how much arguing is left to be done before any action is taken. The rhyme scheme contributes to the play. Its linked pattern seems completed and resolved in the final stanza, underlining the effect of closure: aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd. But is a repeated word a rhyme? Is the resolution excessive; does the repeated line work as a sign of forced closure? None of this is resolved; it is kept in complementary suspension.

from "Comparing Conceptions: Frost and Eddington, Heisenberg and Bohr." In On Frost: The Best from American Literature. Ed. Edwin H. Cady and Louis J. Budd. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1991. Copyright © 1991 by Duke UP. Orginally published in American Literature 59:2 (May 1987).

Troverà strano il mio cavallino
Fermarsi senza una casa vicino
Tra il bosco e il lago gelato
La sera più buia dell'anno.

Dà una scrollata al suo sonaglio
Per domandare se c'è uno sbaglio:
Il solo altro suono è il fruscio
Del vento lieve, dei soffici fiocchi.

Bello è il bosco, buio e profondo,
Ma io ho promesse da non tradire,
E miglia da fare prima di dormire,
E miglia da fare prima di dormire.

(da "New Hampshire", 1923)