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Unit 6: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

2. This poem was first published in Notes

(a) Old Republic (b) Today’s Republic
(c) New Republic (d) none of these
3. Woods seemed to Robert Frost a symbol of
(a) railroads (b) vanishing wilderness

(c) skyscrappers (d) none of these
4. The poem presents one person’s momentary encounter with
(a) fate (b) nature
(c) self (d) none of these
5. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is written in which year?
(a) May 1921 (b) June 1922

(c) June 1923 (d) May 1923
6. In “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Frost writes that the speaker imagines his
horse to think him strange. What might be the significance of this?

(a) Frost is implying that the speaker is insane
(b) The opinion of the horse could represent the opinion of society; the speaker recognises
that, in the eyes of his peers, his actions are unusual

(c) Frost is trying to imbue his otherwise somber poem with a bit of humour
(d) The talking horse suggests that animals, as representatives of the natural world, are
wise and have important things to say to us

6.7 Summary

• “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a poem written in 1922 by Robert Frost,
and published in 1923 in his New Hampshire volume. Imagery and personification are
prominent in the work. In a letter to Louis Untermeyer, Frost called it “my best bid for
remembrance”.
• This is Robert Frost’s most well-known poem. It was published in his collection called
New Hampshire in 1923. This poem illustrates many of the qualities most characteristic
of Frost, including the attention to natural detail, the relationship between humans and
nature, and the strong theme suggested by individual lines. In this poem, the speaker
appears as a character. It is a dark and quiet winter night, and the speaker stops his
horse in order to gaze into the woods. The speaker projects his own thoughts onto the
horse, who doesn’t understand why they have stopped; there’s no practical reason to
stop. The woods are ominously tempting and acquire symbolic resonance in the last
stanza, which concludes with one of Frost’s often-quoted lines, “miles to go before I
sleep.” One interpretation of this stanza is that the speaker is tempted toward death
which he considers.

6.8 Keywords

Aster : A flower that blooms in the autumn
Beholden : Obligated

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