Miles to go

Robert Frost sitting outside the Stone House

After driving down through the peace-filled and gorgeous Green Mountain National Forest, we spent the night in the Bennington area.  This was a planned destination.  Robert Frost lived in New England most of his life.  He moved around quite a bit, but many of his homes were in quiet, rural areas.

Part of the Stone House property

The Stone House was given to Bennington College in this century and is being used as a museum, educational space, and event site.

The Stone House

While he was in the Bennington/Shaftsbury area, he received his first Pulitzer prize.  He also sat in his dining room and wrote one of my favorite poems.  I have read it, said it, sung it, directed choirs and small ensembles as they sang it, and posted it on walls in several homes throughout my lifetime.  I have quoted from it in yearbooks and letters and journals.  It is an important poem to me.

A dining room window view

We were privileged to stand in the dining room and look out the very windows he may have gazed through as he penned the poem.  He said he wrote it in one sitting, that it came to him whole.  There are a few changes in the facsimile of the original manuscript we saw, but the poem itself is there.


I'm so glad we stopped here.

 

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. 

press here to hear Frost read his poem