Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Sir John Gilbert, A horse and a figure lying on the ground, April 1881

Robert Frost, 1922. Shaftsbury, Vermont:

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.

Robert Frost “wrote this poem about winter in June, 1922 at his house in Shaftsbury, Vermont that is now home to the “Robert Frost Stone House Museum”. Frost had been up the entire night writing the long poem “New Hampshire” and had finally finished when he realized morning had come. He went out to view the sunrise and suddenly got the idea for “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”. He wrote the new poem in just a few minutesand later stated that “It was as if I’d had a hallucination.”

The last stanza reminds me that Leonard Cohen has a slightly different take on the promises:

I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed,
I’m back on Boogie Street.
You lose your grip, and then you slip
Into the Masterpiece.
And maybe I had miles to drive,
And promises to keep:
You ditch it all to stay alive,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

Image licensed courtesy of the Picture Library of the Royal Academy of Arts