Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
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FERMANDOSI ACCANTO A UN BOSCO IN UNA SERA DI NEVE |
Whose woods these are I think I know.
Structure and Meter http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/Frost.html 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
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).
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Di chi
sia il bosco credo di sapere.
Ma la sua casa è in paese: così Egli non vede che mi fermo qui A guardare il suo bosco riempirsi di neve.
Troverà strano il mio cavallino
Dà una
scrollata al suo sonaglio
Bello
è il bosco, buio e profondo,
(da "New Hampshire", 1923)
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