Robert Frost

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Robert Frost

• "All poetry is a reproduction of the tones of
  actual speech."

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• 1.Born in San Francisco in 1874, he moved to New
  England at the age of eleven and became
  interested in reading and writing poetry during
  his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
  He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and
  later at Harvard, but never earned a formal
  degree. Frost drifted through a string of
  occupations after leaving school, working as a
  teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence
  Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My
  Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in
  the New York newspaper The Independent.

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• In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who
  became a major inspiration in his poetry until
  her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in
  1912. By the time Frost returned to the United
  States in 1915, he had published two full-length
  collections, A Boy's Will and North of Boston,
  and his reputation was established. By the
  nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated
  poet in America, and with each new bookincluding
  New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936),
  Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing
  (1962)his fame and honors (including four
  Pulitzer Prizes) increased.

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• Though his work is principally associated with
  the life and landscape of New England, and though
  he was a poet of traditional verse forms and
  metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the
  poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost
  is anything but a merely regional or minor poet.
  The author of searching and often dark
  meditations on universal themes, he is a
  quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to
  language as it is actually spoken, in the
  psychological complexity of his portraits, and in
  the degree to which his work is infused with
  layers of ambiguity and irony. Robert Frost lived
  and taught for many years in Massachusetts and
  Vermont, and died on January 29, 1963, in Boston.

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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.His house
is in the village thoughHe will not see me
stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with
snow. My little horse must think it queerTo stop
without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and
frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year. He
gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there
is some mistake.The only other sounds the
sweepOf 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.
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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
We can trace the emotional resonance of
Frost's poem back to the concrete situation that
helped engender it. Shortly before Christmas of
1905, Frost had made an unsuccessful trip into
town to sell eggs in order to raise money for his
children's Christmas presents. "Alone in the
driving snow, the memory of his years of hopeful
but frustrated struggle welled up, and he let his
long-pent feelings out in tears." The intensity
of this tearful moment translates into the
affective content that permeates but never
overwhelms "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening."  
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character

•   The characters involved in this poem are the
  man and his horse. The man could be just an
  ordinary person stopping by the woods to enjoy
  the snowy evening. Or maybe the person isn't a
  man at all. The poem never mentions his gender so
  there could be a chance that the speaker is a
  woman.         The poem could also be
  understood in a different way. The speaker could
  be dreaming about the woods in the wintertime. If
  this is true, only in the last stanza is it
  revealed that he is dreaming when he says, "And
  miles to go before I sleep."

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•   Another theory could be that Robert Frost was
  writing about Santa Claus. The evidence
  supporting this is as follows          1.) In
  the second stanza, the first two lines say, "My
  little horse must think it queer/ To stop without
  a farmhouse near." That would mean that the horse
  is accustomed to stopping beside houses, so Santa
  could deliver his presents.          2.) In the
  last stanza, the second and third lines say, "But
  I have promises to keep/ And miles to go before I
  sleep." The speaker says that because he knows
  all the little children are waiting for him and
  he can't disappoint them by being late.

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Theme

• The theme of "Stopping by Woods"--despite Frost's
  disclaimer--is the temptation of death, even
  suicide, symbolized by the woods that are filling
  up with snow on the darkest evening of the year.
  The speaker is powerfully drawn to these woods
  ,wants to lie down and let the snow cover and
  bury him. The third quatrain, with its drowsy,
  dream-like line "Of easy wind and downy flake,"
  opposes the horse's instinctive urge for home
  with the man's subconscious desire for death in
  the dark, snowy woods. The speaker says, "The
  woods are lovely, dark and deep," but he resists
  their morbid attraction.

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Transformations

• "He gives his harness bells a shake" comes from
  Scott's "The Rover" (in Palgrave) "He gave the
  bridle-reins a shake. "The woods are lovely,
  dark and deep" comes from Thomas Lovell Beddoes'
  "The Phantom Wooer" "Our bed is lovely, dark,
  and sweet." The concluding "And miles to go
  before I sleep" comes from Keats' "Keen Fitful
  Gusts" "And I have many miles on foot to fare."
  Though these three lines are variations from
  other poets, Frost, writing in the tradition of
  English verse, makes them original and new, and
  integrates them perfectly into his own poem.

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• 1.The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts
  working when you get up in the morning, and
  doesn't stop until you get to the office
• 2.The best way out is always through .
• 3.By working faithfully eight hours a day you may
  eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a
  day.