In a wintery forest a traveller with his horse hesitates to stop in the woods to rest instead of continuing his journey and therefore accomplishing his mission elsewhere. The specific arrangement of rhymes supported by an iambic tentrameter and the use of mostly monosyllabic words at the end of each line create the effect of reading a lullaby. This precise application works calming not only to the reader but also represents the speaker‘s struggle: to keep a clear mind, not getting seduced by the compelling wood and going to sleep, perhaps without awakening.

Slight alterations and discrepancies of meter and rhythm can change possible interpretations of a poem. In the last stanza there is an intensification of the simplification of the rhyming pattern (aaba bbcb ccdc dddd). The last sentence “And miles to go before I sleep” (15­16) is a couplet and stands out because there is a repetition of it. Also, form and content stand in contrast to each other: repetition and simplification of rhymes in the whole stanza lead to an easy and calming reading flow, thus the idea of reading a lullaby. However, the persona is saying that he can not go  to sleep yet. Clearly this ambiguity shows his dilemma to chose between rationality and levity.

The word sleep often gets connected with death. In this sense sleep is a metaphor for death. The woods that he finds “lovely, dark and deep” (13) would represent his tomb and “the darkest evening of the year” (8) his day of death. The enumeration of “lovely, dark and deep” – one with a positive and two with a negative connotation – support the idea of the persona’s affection of staying and going to sleep/die in the forest. There are only three signs of awakening in the poem: firstly his horse that “(…) must think it queer / To stop without a farmhouse near” (5­6), secondly the horse again that “(…) gives his harness bells a shake / To ask if there is some mistake” (9­–10) and thirdly the “But I have promises to keep” in line 14. These statements all represent the village, community and especially obligations and do not come from the protagonist’s inside, meaning that these revolts do not accord with his longing. Like a wakeup­call the horse’s bells interrupt the quiet, snowy being of the forest and remember him that there is a life beyond it.

The poem is written in first person’s narrator’s perspective. He is projecting his own thoughts onto the horse’s: “My little horse must think it queer” (5). There is no perception of the animal itself, no evidence that it really exists. The solitude is also shown by the noise level in the woods. “The only other sound’s the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake” (11­12). The word “easy” however makes this loneliness pleasurable and shows again that the persona has an affection towards the woods and its promises.

At first sight simple, logical and structured, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a poem that shows the divergence of two different worlds the protagonist is struggling with. The one, that is dangerous, lonely but free and the other where obligations are part of but a social life is present that can keep you from misery. The persona does not fear death and could choose this option as alternative to live his desires.