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Miles to Go Before I Sleep
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 the Woods on a Snowy Evening, 1923
As an impressionable first year university student—back then, we were called Freshmen—one of my favorite courses was my 8 AM American poetry seminar, where I fell in love with Robert Frost. I have previously written about my professor, Dr. Robert Cox, who somehow managed to awaken his sleepy charges by reading to us. Most memorable what the work of Robert Frost, whose vivid pastoral imagery stirred our imaginations.
Over the years, I have returned again and again to Frost’s poem, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, and with each reading, I gain different insights. As I reflect on the narrator, it seems that the individual as lost their way. The person stands at a turning point in his life, not knowing where he is to go. Forests and dark woods are recurring symbols in literature of our unconscious minds—of our efforts to find our path in life. While the narrator stands at a crossroad within the darkness of the forest, there is the possibility of hope.
What is less well known about Frost was his commitment to education—particularly to education in the humanities—and how he influenced many universities where he held important appointments including Harvard, Amherst, and University of Michigan. Since Frost’s co-founding in 1920, Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College remains an important and prestigious literary center for summer graduate programs and has expanded to other sites in the United States and to the University of Oxford in England. Not too long before his death in a lecture to students at Bread Loaf, he beseeched them,
Make a dip for depth and take your emotions with you.
On this, the Winter Solstice of 2023, the darkest night of the year, and the very same night that Frost describes in his poem, let us remain impelled not to consider either the road taken or not taken, but to consider traversing all roads that lead to enlightenment.
For the wind and downy flake,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth C. Orozco Reilly
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