Of the poetry of Robert Frost it has been pointed out, ". . . if the majority of Frost's admirers . . . seem . . . content to share the poet's delight in cherishing the humble beauties of nature recorded by him with such precision . . . those readers have been willing to settle for too little, when so many other and deeper levels of meaning are available in his poems (Thompson 40-41). Of the many poems this assertion could be made, "Stopping
by Woods on a Snowy Evening" provides one of the more interesting and revealing examples. Consideration of the process of Frost's creativity in the writing of this poem must take these two major factors into account: the simple pastoral scene used as the poem's "setting" and the idea or thought of the poem itself.
In "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" the poet-as-narrator draws the reader into the world of his experience on two levels, and it is the conjunction and relationship between these two levels that the meaning of the poem derives. He begins the poem and continues for the majority of its length describing a particular wintry scene he once encountered. And by means of the way he describes the scene and the approach he utilizes in talking about it, he adds detail upon detail not solely to the physical description, but to the revelation of what is going on in the mind of the poet as well.
In the introductory lines of the poem, although there is no direct, verbal indication of it made, the sense communicated is that the "speaker" is a person who knows the woods. The "speaker" appears to be familiar with were he is once in the woods, and recognizes the setting for its combination of elements of the natural scene. As such, the poet implicitly communicates to the reader that he is no stranger to the woods; it is a world familiar to him. It is his home. The poem is not, however, anything of a "guided tour" of the forest at a particular time of the year. While he is taking the reader ...