Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Analysis

Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay

Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our...

Form and Meter

You may or may not have noticed that "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" has a nice ring to it, almost like a song. There's rhythm and there's reason, and even some rhyming in this poem. Compose...

Speaker

He's your typical dude. You know, the one riding his horse though the countryside around 5:00pm near the end of December, taking a breather to watch the woods fill up with snow. Wait just a minute....

Setting

We imagine it's a dark evening, perhaps around 5:00pm, near the winter solstice (late December). Although our speaker doesn't tell us why he's out, we picture our speaker has been traveling across...

Sound Check

Think kindergarten recess meets a funeral hymn. Creepy? Yes, we know. But hear us out. With an unusual and uncommon rhyme scheme (check out "Form and Meter" section) and with only eight syllables t...

What's Up With the Title?

The title sounds to us like it would work nicely as a title for a painting, and we can easily imagine (even before reading the poem) gazing at a framed oil painting in a carefully lit museum that s...

Calling Card

First of all, can we just point out what a cool name Robert Frost has? If that's not an ideal calling card, than we don't know what is. Imagine registering him for a driver's license or something:S...

Tough-O-Meter

Just as you can slice a pie in a million different ways, you can consider as many interpretations of this poem as you like. In fact, this poem demands that you look at it from multiple angles. That...

Brain Snacks

Sex Rating

Read this poem aloud to your baby brother, your puppy, your grandmother. It's clean and pure as freshly fallen snow.