Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

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.

Where this text comes from

First published in New Hampshire (1923). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1] [2] [3]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/robert-frost_new-hampshire, new-hampshire.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1#L16.

Cite this poem

Robert Frost (1874–1963). “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” First published in New Hampshire (1923). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-frost/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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