Jonathan Bradtke
Professor Lynn Petrillo
Writing II
3 March 2015
From One Beginner to Another
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost ends with the following
lines:
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. (13-16)
After reading many poems by Robert Frost such as “Mending Wall” and “The Roads
Not Taken” those last lines mentioned above are some of Frost’s most powerful.
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a multilayered poem that may seem
simple but brings conflicts between man and nature, God, and society (Ogilvie 64).
Robert Frost lived from 1874-1963 and most of his work was completed using the
rural setting of New England as the backdrop for his poems (“Robert Frost,”
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia). Throughout Frost’s life he had won multiple
awards including four Pulitzer Prizes and was declared Poet laureate of Vermont in
1961 as well as winning the Congressional Gold Medal in the previous year (“Robert
Frost,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia). “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
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by Robert Frost shows the social significance of the tension between an individuals
beliefs and their respective God(s); while providing an in depth emotion connection
using loneliness to create a realization in anybody that decides to read Robert Frost.
I personally enjoy reading this particular poem because of its relatively ease
to understand and to grasp the theme of the poem. According to Ogilvie, “The
beginning poetry student in particular is likely to take to it, for quite understandable
reasons: its diction is unpretentious and subtly musical…” (64). This further affirms
my original argument that even a beginner poetry student (such as myself) can
understand this poem. Ogilvie goes further and states that this poem has layers and
has a “ …disconcerting way of deepening in dimension as one looks at it, of
darkening in tone, until it emerges as a full-blown critical and pedagogical problem”
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