Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

[Bertha Venation]

A lovely post by ayeshahaqqiqa in another thread brought this Frost poem to mind. As I type, I'm hearing it as sung by the men of my last chorus. This and seven other Frost poems were set to music in 1959 by composer Randall Thompson in a suite called "Frostiana." It's available at Amazon.com on a CD called "Testament of Freedom."

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

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 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

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. I love Robert Frost

The Road Less Traveled is still one of my all time favorite poems.

[Bertha Venation]

2. Frost wrote my 23rd Psalm and my Lord's Prayer in

"Choose Something Like A Star"

Only that and Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning" make me know that some part of my little soul can transcend the earth.

Frost and Angelou have taught me to live beyond my reach.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

6. I have the inaugural edition signed by her of Pulse of a Morning

Holy hell...remember the HOPE we all felt that day?

[Bertha Venation]

18. god, yes, I remember the hope

It was the day my political self woke up. 1/20/01 was the day that self almost died.

Here's to 2004!

[caledesi]

3. Didn't JFK have Robert Frost read at his inaugural?

I am pretty sure he did. Love Frost.

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening...Robert Frost
Is there a pun here? LOL!

[Bertha Venation]

5. Yes, he did.

The wind blew away his new poem, penned just for JFK's inaugural, so Frost told it from memory.

[Abe Linkman]

4. What this poem is about

This beautiful poem is about "responsibility". It, and Thomas Gray's "Elegy In a Country Churchyard" are two of the finest poems ever written, in my humble opinion.

[cryofan]

7. Maybe it is about death?

??

[Individualist]

14. That's my understanding

"but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep"

[alphafemale]

15. Not so much death, as it is the weight of time, and stealing a moment

from obligations and the unending blind, headlong rush; to see how beautiful it all can be, in spite of everything.

[ironflange]

8. This poem has always reminded me of Xmas

Just the peaceful snowy feel, I guess. I was in a men's chorus in college eons ago, and this was one piece we performed. I can still sing through the whole thing, a lovely and evocative anthem.

[NJCher]

9. this calls for a picture

My house in the snow.


Cher

[Bertha Venation]

19. lovely, Cher

thanks

[xchrom]

10. god -- i love frost

and this poem is one of my favs -- thank you.

[JohnKleeb]

11. I like Frost

This is a good one, and I think I got miles to go until I can truly sleep.

[Padraig18]

12. Frost rocks!

:)

[Cheswick2.0]

13. another favorite Frost

The Mending Wall


Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

[Malva Zebrina]

16. the woods are lovely dark and deep

and indeed they are--and they smell wonderfully, dark and deep and they are quiet, dark and deep and there is nothing like the dark and the deep of a forest

"Of easy wind and downy flake--" Frost loved New England and many of his poems reflect that .

I paid homage to Robert Frost at his burial site in Bennington, Vermont one fine spring day and was proud to do so.

[cryofan]

17. This poem gives me a strange urge to,,,,

.....blow up something....miles to go before I sleep.....hmmm....