July/August 2019

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST: THE COLLECTED POEMS, COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002. Henry Holt: New York, 2002; originally published in 1923. In the spring of 2017, I traveled with my father as he was doing research on the former death camps in eastern Poland. Driving back to Lublin, we made a stop in the Renaissance city of Zamość. In the central square, we came upon an old man in a feather hat and high boots standing next to a gray horse and carriage. The coachman offered to take us around. “I’m the last coachman of Zamość,” he declared. Curious, I asked: “What do you mean?” The old coachman replied in Polish, which I could understand, more or less, because I speak Russian: “I’m an old stupid man still to be driving this horse and buggy.” His words carried me back across the ocean to my native New England. The ride in the old-fashioned carriage at dusk brought to mind the second stanza of one of my favorite poems by the great American poet Robert Frost: 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. The 48-year-old Frost wrote this melodic poem in Shaftsbury, Vermont, in 1922 and included it in his collection New Hampshire. The poem captures a person’s travels through the night—and through the unknown. The speaker stops to rest in the alluring quietness of the night. This scene in the poem shows the speaker’s peculiar behavior in front of the “little horse.” The speaker seeks a break from his commitments and obligations (“promises”) in life. The poem continues: 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. The question that has been soaring in my head is: Whose woods are these? Who is the greater “he” in the poem? Is it a person—a farmer or a simple peasant boy? “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep,” states the speaker in the final stanza. I wonder again, to whom are these promises given? They could be promised to a specific person or a soul, to God or a higher power, or even to art itself. To accomplish his meaningful tasks, Frost organized the poem in deceptively simple stanzas with rhymes that travel through the poem like a trotting horse through the woods. The rhyming conjures up the poem’s central theme. In the first three stanzas, the rhyme of the third line becomes the main rhyme of the first, second, and fourth lines in the following stanza: here in the first becomes queer, near, and year in the second. In the final, fourth stanza the whole poem comes together by employing the same rhyme throughout: deep/keep/sleep/sleep. Why is this poem called one of the best in the 20th century? I think the poem is like an earring that was lost and later found. It shows human nature simplified into little pieces waiting to be discovered. Frost’s poem invites but does not force the reader to keep his or her own promises to people, and to the world. Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, 11Brookline, MA

“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost, from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST: THE COLLECTED POEMS, COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002. Henry Holt: New York, 2002; originally published in 1923. I first came across Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” two-and-a half years ago, nestled in a copy of S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders. To this day, I have every word of the poem memorized. It is a quick poem that says so much in so little. It combines powerful figurative language and a deeper meaning, crafts beautiful imagery, and creates a fluid sound pattern. First, anyone who likes the outdoors and outdoor writing will enjoy “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Every line of the poem relates to some sort of item in nature: Frost touches on the Garden of Eden, the sky, and the earth. With the second line (“Her hardest hue to hold”), Frost also personifies nature as someone struggling to hold onto her prettiest hues in her early hours. Though there are a number of possible readings for this line, it is easily comparable to children in their innocent years: an individual is guiltless and pure early on, which is the “gold” of life, yet innocence is something that stays “only so an hour.” After all, as Frost points out, everything ends. Eventually, a golden flower must join the other flowers on the ground, when “dawn goes down to day.” While it is sad that every good thing can’t last forever, Frost uses dawn and day instead of day and night to show that there are hopes for the future. He still manages to make the poem optimistic. Through minimal words, Frost still forms a beautiful scene. His imagery, though confined to just eight lines and forty words, allows any reader to see spring. I imagined a sunshine-yellow daffodil (“Nature’s first green is gold”) bloom, then wilt. I imagined a violet twilight turn into blackness, ending the dawn. Each word in the poem has a purpose and together forms a visual that any reader can see. What I love the most about this poem is its number of powerful words. Additionally, the couplet rhyming scheme and similar syllable count in each line give the poem a watery flow. The words and sounds form a cohesive work, instead of a choppy, peppery, scattered slew of letters. When I first read the poem, I never imagined it would have such an effect on me. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is a golden piece that any reader would enjoy as it appeals to a wide audience through a gorgeous combination of descriptive words, a layer that is deeper than just a picture, and its concise but nice phonetic pattern. And for all these reasons, I think this poem can stay. Maya Wolfford, 13Cincinnati, OH