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, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, by Robert Frost. Reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Source: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays (Library of America, 1995)
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| Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920. |
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| 1. The Road Not Taken |
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| | | TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, | | | And sorry I could not travel both | | | And be one traveler, long I stood | | | And looked down one as far as I could | | | To where it bent in the undergrowth; | 5 | | | | Then took the other, as just as fair, | | | And having perhaps the better claim, | | | Because it was grassy and wanted wear; | | | Though as for that the passing there | | | Had worn them really about the same, | 10 | | | | And both that morning equally lay | | | In leaves no step had trodden black. | | | Oh, I kept the first for another day! | | | Yet knowing how way leads on to way, | | | I doubted if I should ever come back. | 15 | | | | I shall be telling this with a sigh | | | Somewhere ages and ages hence: | | | Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— | | | I took the one less traveled by, | | | And that has made all the difference. |
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