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AMER MAHMOOD YOUSAF
ENGLISH DEPTT.
GOVT. ISLAMIA COLLEGE CIVIL
LINES LAHORE.

 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’s 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.

 Robert

Frost writes the poem of Stopping
By Woods on a Snowy Evening in first
person point of view.
 in iambic pentameter.
 four quatrains.
 aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd

 Stopping

By Woods on a Snowy
Evening can be symbolic for many things,
but in this case, it probably means
reminiscing past memories when a person
is in the older years on their life.
 In the first stanza, Frost’s narrator states
that he is passing some woods of a man
who lives in the village, watching them to
“fill up with snow”(line 4).

 Woods

are symbolic for life, and while the
snow indicates winter, this could mean the
narrator is elderly. If that symbolism is
added to that stanza, the first stanza quite
possibly mean that the narrator is an aged
man, looking at his life, remembering all in
which has happened in it.

 On

to the second stanza, the narrator
mentions that he is “between the woods
and frozen lake, the darkest evening of
year”(lines seven and 8).
 Symbolically this represents that he is at
the beginning of the end of life.

 However,

in line five, the narrator barely
elucidates that he is riding a horse, and stops
it “without a farmhouse near”(line 6) which
corresponds to the third stanza. “My little
horse”(line 5) in the third stanza is given
human characteristics, because the horse
asks if stopping between the woods and
frozen lake is some mistake, and the horse is
then even more confused for the only other
sound is of the wind and snow falling.

 Lines

13, 14, 15, and 16 in the fourth and
last stanza of Stopping By Woods on a
Snowy Evening says that although the
“woods are lovely, dark and deep”(line 13)
the narrator has “promises to keep”(line
14) and “miles to go before I sleep”(lines
15 and 16).

 Translated

into symbolism, this means that
although life is mysterious and wonderful,
he has obligations to keep, and much to do
before his breaths his last breath and dies.

 The

examples of the rhymes in Frost’s
poem are from the lines of one and four,
lines five, six and eight, and lines 15 and
16. “Know” and “snow”(lines 1 and 4),
“queer,” “near” and “year”(lines 5, 6, and 8)
and “sleep” and “sleep”(line 15 and16) are
examples of masculine rhyme because
one syllable rhymes in the word.

 True

rhyme occurs during the lines of 13
and 14 with the words “deep” and “keep.”
These words are true rhyme because only
the first syllable does not rhyme.
 There is one example of internal rhyme is
“he” and “me”(line 3).

on a Snowy Evening. “To watch his
woods fill up with snow”(line 4) uses the
sense of sight for readers to imagine a forest
with snow in it.
 “Between the woods and frozen lake”(line 7)
creates a site of landscape with woods on
one side of the environment, and a lake with
frozen ice on the opposite side with land
between them, perhaps with a path.
 “The woods are lovely, dark and deep”(line
13) and “”he gives his harness bells a
shake”(line 9) are also sight imagery.
 Woods

 “He

gives his harness bells a shake” also
incorporates sound. The line “The woods
are…” gets readers to envision a setting of
the woods that is beautiful, with little
spaces between the trees to give it a dark
feeling that seem to never end.

Symbolically, the horse the narrator implicates can
symbolize something that guides him through life.
 In lines five and six the narrator voices “My little horse
must think it queer, To stop without a farmhouse
near”(lines 5 and 6).
 If the horse is symbolic for something that is guiding
him through life, such as a person whom he loves, this
could mean that such person thinks it odd for him to
“stop without a farmhouse near.”
 If this is to be so, then later in Frost’s poem, then
when the narrator says “He gives his harness bells a
shake, To ask if there is some mistake”(lines 9 and 10)


this could mean that the person is trying to get the
narrator’s attention to ask him questions about his
life, or the end of it, because the next lines “The
only other sound’s the sweep, Of easy wind and
downy flake”(lines 11 and 12) can mean the
narrator might not have a an answer to the
persons question.
 The reasoning for this is that if the narrator asks
these questions and the only other sounds is of
“easy wind” and “downy flake” then that means
that out of the sounds that is supposed to be there,
there is only the questions and not of a response.


 Another

literary element in the
poem Stopping By Woods on a Snowy
Evening is personification. The first
example happens in line five “My little
horse must think it queer.”
 The next example of personification is in
the third line of the third stanza, for it
reads, “To ask if there is some mistake.”



Robert Frost’s poem Stopping By Woods on a
Snowy Evening has an example of connotative
and denotative word meanings. Fourth stanza,
third and fourth lines, the word sleep is an
example. Denotatively, sleep means to take the
rest afforded by a suspension of voluntary bodily
functions and the natural suspension, complete or
partial, of consciousness or to cease being awake.
How Frost means sleep though is the connotative
meaning though. Frost means for sleep to be
death. This changes the meaning of the lines
completely.

 Robert

Frost writes the poem Stopping By
Woods on a Snowy Evening in 1st person
point of view has symbolic meanings
hidden in it.

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literary devices used in Stopping by woods on a snowy evening

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literary devices used in Stopping by woods on a snowy evening