In the fall of 1923, 99 years ago, the 49-year-old Robert Frost published “New Hampshire,” his fourth collection of new poetry. It won the Pulitzer Prize and endless praise, but more to the point, from then till his death in 1963, we had not just Robert Frost but the “Robert Frost Phenomenon.” He was America’s poet, our our icon of verse and our winter-haired pillar of poetry, the one poet every American could name. And the reason was such poems in “New Hampshire” as “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” — along with his 1916 poem, “The Road Not Taken,” as well known as American poetry gets. In honor of that publication 99 years ago, The New York Sun is presenting a week of Robert Frost in its Poem of the Day feature.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” shares another characteristic with “The Road Not Taken”: They’re both commonly misunderstood and less uplifting than one might suppose. In fact, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a suicide poem. Or, at least, a poem half in love with easeful death — a poem that perceives the deadly allure of the dark and deep. The famous ending (“I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep”) begins with the word “but.” It is a resignation to responsibility: The woods may be lovely, dark and deep, calling to us to sleep in them as we will sleep in the grave, “but” … we have promises to keep, which bind us to the living.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

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.