Tourism-GEO PROJECT

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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 sounds 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.

Frost wrote the poem in June 1922 at his house in Shaftsbury, Vermont. He had been
up the entire night writing the long poem "New Hampshire" from the poetry collection
of the same name, 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".[2] He wrote the new poem "about the snowy evening and the little
horse as if I'd had a hallucination" in just "a few minutes without strain."
Personally, I have always read this poem as being quite dark. The woods are described
to be ‘lovely, dark and deep’, they are beckoning and tempting the narrator. They are
quiet and restful, like deep sleep or oblivion. To lie down in the woods with the snow
falling will almost certainly lead to death.

‘The darkest evening of the year’ could be a metaphor for depression, or another
moment in which life is at its toughest, thus making the oblivion of the woods extra
appealing.

The narrator’s horse, however, rouses him from his thoughts and brings him back to the
present moment, in which he realises that he has ‘promises to keep’, such as a duty to
his loved ones to stay alive. Moreover, he has ‘miles to go before he sleeps’, referring to
all the things he still wants to, or feels that he has to do before he can give in to his urge
to go into the woods and potentially die there.
This poem has always been associated with death, even in the world of politics
In the early morning of November 23, 1963, Sid Davis of Westinghouse
Broadcasting reported the arrival of President John F. Kennedy's casket at the White
House. Since Frost was one of the President's favorite poets, Davis concluded his
report with a passage from this poem but was overcome with emotion as he signed off.
[8][9]

At the funeral of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, on October 3, 2000,
his eldest son, Justin, rephrased the last stanza of this poem in his eulogy: "The woods
are lovely, dark and deep. He has kept his promises and earned his sleep."[10]
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, towards his later years, kept a book
of Robert Frost close to him, even at his bedside table as he lay dying. One page of the
book featured the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", and the last four
lines were underlined.[11]

Naturally, we don’t *have* to read the poem as something so dark. We can also argue
that the temptation of the beauty of the snowy woods is enough to make the narrator
pause and that he really only wants to ‘watch [the] woods fill up with snow’.

Other interpretations include seeing the woods as something wild and natural and the
village as society or civilisation. The narrator describes how he is torn between an urge
to be free and wild and his commitment to the other people in the village.

As always, a poem is what you make of it.

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