Poem Analysis

This poem is popular and also fantastic.
This poem really inspired me. I liked the idea of how we, humans are too busy to even look at nature's beauty. In one word, Inspiring.

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Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening                by Robert Frost

 This poem is about a man who was going on his way home with his horse. When he reaches the forest he suddenly stops. There was a forest with snow falling on it gently. The beauty of the forest amazed him. He tried to enjoy this moment, but his horse shook its bell waking him up from this dream. He recognizes that he has so many works to do beyond enjoying the view of such places. He exposes his opinion on this piece of poem showing the pity of our busy life. The theme of this poem is, ‘our life is too busy to even enjoy a slight moment of joy in front of beautiful nature.’ This poem has all kinds of sadness, which expresses the busy life of man. This could be the tone of the poem.

 When you are reading this poem, you can imagine a scene inside your mind how the man comes by riding a horse, give a glance to the forest, daze at it and get on going with his way. It is because the poem has a lot of visual imagery. When the man says ‘To watch his woods fill up with snow’ you can actually imagine a deep wood filling up with white snow. You also know that this view is amazingly beautiful. Why? Because you have also seen this kind of sight once in your life that you can relate it to. The poem has a very strong visual imagery effect because the poet seeks for things and actions that all the people in the world are familiar with. If you can relate some phrases or even stories in some writing with your own experience, it gives you a strong effect and it is strong enough to stay in your brain for a while. When he says ‘between the woods and frozen lake’ you can see them in front of your eyes and can feel the cold behind your back. This could also be one of Robert Frost’s tricks trying to relate to what the readers know and experienced. When the ‘horse gives the man a harness bells a shake’… and when the poet says ‘the only other sound’s the sweep of easy wind and downy flake’, it gives you a strong auditory imagery. You can immediately imagine how quite the surroundings are and how loud the bell sounds in this situation. The light breeze and even the sound of snow falling were heard. But then the tinkling of the bell came… This startles you because of its loudness. Surprisingly the man in this poem also gets startled and get back to reality from daydreaming. This makes you approve a lot to this character and helps you understand the poem more.

 Symbols make the whole point of writing this poem a lot stronger. When the poet says ‘My little horse must think queer to stop without a farmhouse near’. This shows that even the horse is used to going near a farmhouse when stopping or stopping when they are at the destiny they ought to be. Not even the man but also animals are used to doing their duty and not caring about the nature. This could be a symbol of desperate situation. The poet says in the last two lines, ‘and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep’ this could have two meanings. One could be the sleep he will have at the end of the day. So this basically means he still have a lot of things he have to do before his day ends. But another meaning could be the amount of things he has to do in a lifetime. Sometime sleep symbolizes death. So these two lines have two symbols.

 In Robert Frost poems, there aren’t many figures of speech. It is usually straight forward or matter of fact attitude. But in this poem there is one figure of speech. There is a repetition in the last two lines. ‘And miles to go before I sleep’ is repeated two times. It could be trying to tell the reader how important that is. Or it could mean two different things just like what I said above.

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