Gift

What a lovely day of snow! Or at least it is if you like snow, which I don't. But lots of people do. However, the snowstorm has given me one present: it has made me remember a poem that I haven't thought about in a long time. It's called "Stopping by the Woods", and it was written by Robert Frost, an important American poet of the first part of the 1900s. The story is simple: a man riding his horse one winter evening stops to watch the snow fall in the woods. Some people have seen complicated meanings in this poem (Frost himself said these interpretations were mostly rubbish), but even if it is possible to find lots of symbols hiding in the text, I am not sure that it is important. This poem is one of those poems that are pure joys for the simplicity of expression and perfection of meter, rhyme and sound.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

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.

If you are interested, here is a video of Frost reading his poem.

And what has this snowy day given to you?