“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” Summary

The speaker thinks about who owns the woods that he or she is passing through, and is
fairly sure of knowing the landowner. However, the owner's home is far away in the
village, and thus he is physically incapable of seeing the speaker pause to watch the snow
fall in the forest.

The speaker thinks his or her horse must find it strange to stop so far from any signs of
civilization. Indeed, they are surrounded only by the forest and a frozen lake, on the
longest night of the year.

The horse shakes the bells on its harness, as if asking if the speaker has made a mistake
by stopping. The only other sound besides the ringing of these bells is that of the wind
and falling snowflakes, which the speaker likens to the feathers of goose down.

The speaker finds the woods very alluring, drawn both to their darkness and how vast and
all-encompassing they seem. However, the speaker has obligations to fulfill
elsewhere. Thus, though he or she would like to stay and rest, the speaker knows there
are many more miles to go before that will be possible.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” Themes

Nature vs. Society

In “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” the speaker describes stopping to watch
the snow fall while riding a horse through the woods at night. While alone in the forest,
the speaker reflects on the natural world and its implicit contrast with society. Though
Frost’s poem resists a definitive interpretation, the natural world it depicts is at once
“lovely” and overwhelming. The fact that it seemingly lures the speaker to linger in the
dark and cold suggests that nature is both a tempting and a threatening force, a realm that
resists people’s efforts to tame it while also offering respite from the demands of civilized
life.
The poem presents the natural world as distinctly separate from human society. The poem
begins with the speaker thinking about who owns the property he is passing through
—“Whose woods these are I think I know”—yet it’s clear that there's no one there to
actually stop the speaker from trespassing. The owner’s “house is in the village,”
meaning “he will not see” the speaker. While this owner may think the woods belong to
him, he can’t control who passes by “his” land any more than he can stop the woods from
“fill[ing] up with snow.” The land owner’s absence and futility, in turn, suggest that the
human impulse to dominate the natural world is misguided.

The complete lack of signs of civilization, meanwhile, further emphasizes the distance
between society and nature. There are no farmhouses nearby, and the only sound apart
from the “harness bells” of the speaker’s horse is that of the wind. Though the speaker
acknowledges that, at least conceptually, he or she stands on someone else’s woods, the
physical isolation indicates the impotence of conceptual structures like ownership in the
first place. In other words, people can say they "own" land all they want, but that doesn't
really mean anything when those people aren't around. Far from the sights and sounds of
the village, the speaker stands alone “Between the woods and frozen lake” on the
“darkest evening of the year.” Together all these details again present nature as a cold and
foreboding space distinct from society.

At the same time, however, the woods are “lovely” enough that they tempt the speaker to
stay awhile, complicating the idea of nature as an entirely unwelcoming place for human
beings. Indeed, though the setting seems gloomy, the speaker also recounts the “sweep /
Of easy wind and downy flake.” This language makes the setting seem calm and
comforting. The speaker finds the wind “easy” or mellow and the snowflakes “downy,”
like the soft feathers that fill a blanket or pillow. Finally, in the final stanza, the speaker
definitively says, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.” This suggests the speaker’s
particular interest in the solitude that the woods offers.
 Though the speaker knows that he or she “has promises to keep”—suggesting certain
societal demands that pull the speaker to continue—the woods are a tempting place to
stop and rest. For a moment, the speaker is able to pause for no reason other than to
simply watch the falling snow. However raw and cold, then, nature also allows for the
kind of quiet reflection people may struggle to find amidst the stimulation of society.

Social Obligation vs. Personal Desire

Though the speaker is drawn to the woods and, the poem subtly suggests, would like to
stay there longer to simply watch the falling snow, various responsibilities prevent any
lingering. The speaker is torn between duty to others—those pesky “promises to keep”—
and his or her wish to stay in the dark and lovely woods. The poem can thus be read as
reflecting a broader conflict between social obligations and individualism.

This tension between responsibility and desire is clearest in the final stanza. Although
“the woods are lovely,” the speaker has other things to which he or she must attend. This
suggests that the speaker is only passing through the woods on some sort of business—
which, in turn, helps explain how unusual it is that the speaker has stopped to gaze at the
forest filling with snow. Indeed, the fact that the speaker’s horse must “think it queer”—
even a “mistake”—that they’re stopping implies that the speaker’s world is typically
guided by social interaction and regulations, making solitary, seemingly purposeless
deeds especially odd. The speaker doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who wastes time
or reneges on his promises. However much the speaker might like to stay in the “dark and
deep” woods, then, he or she must continue on, once again prioritizing responsibility to
others and social convention.

Of course, the speaker seems to show some ambivalence toward these social obligations.
The speaker subtly juxtaposes his or her interest in the woods with regret about his or her
duties to others: the woods are lovely, “but I have promises to keep.” The promises seem
to be a troublesome reality that keeps the speaker from doing what he or she
actually wants to do—that is, stay alone in the woods for a little while. Indeed, the
 specific language that the speaker uses to describe the woods suggests he or she isn’t
quite ready to leave. They are “lovely, dark and deep,” implying the woods contain the
possibility for respite from the comparatively bright and shallow world of human society.
Social responsibilities thus inhibit the chance for meaningful reflection.

Additionally, the image of snow’s “downy flake” suggests that the speaker is as attracted
to the woods as one might be to a comfortable bed. In fact, the speaker seems wearied by
travel and social obligation, and the woods seem to represent his or her wish to rest. But
this wish cannot be realized because of the oppressive “miles to go,” which must be
traveled as a result of duty to others (i.e., in order to "keep" those "promises"). Thus, the
final lines may suggest the speaker’s weariness both toward the physical journey that
remains and the social rules that drive that very journey forward in the first place.

Ultimately, we don't know if the speaker satisfies his or her social duties or remains in the
woods. On the one hand, the admittance of having “promises to keep” can be read as the
speaker accepting that social obligations trump individual wishes. Yet it's also possible to
read the final lines as the speaker’s continued hesitation; perhaps the speaker
is thinking about the miles left to go but not yet doing anything about it, instead
remaining torn between the tiresome duties of society and the desire for individual
freedom that is manifested in the woods.

Hesitation and Choice

Throughout the poem, the speaker seems to be stuck in a space in between society’s
obligations and nature’s offer of solitude and reflection. Though the speaker reflects on
the possibilities offered by each, he or she is ultimately never able to choose between
them. In fact, the speaker’s literal and figurative placement seems to suggest that choice
itself might not even be possible, because societal rules and expectations restrict the
speaker's free will. In other words, beyond exploring the competing pulls of
responsibility and personal desire on the speaker, the poem also considers the nature—or
mere possibility—of choice itself.
The speaker starts and ends the poem in a state of hesitation. In the first line, the speaker
says, “Whose woods these are I think I know,” a statement which wavers between a sure
declaration (“I know”) and doubt (“I think”). This may suggest that the central conflict of
the poem will be the speaker’s battle with uncertainty. The physical setting of the poem,
in which a speaker stops partway through a journey, mirrors this irresolution, finding the
speaker neither at a destination nor a point of departure but rather somewhere in between.

The speaker also notably pauses “between the woods and frozen lake”—literally between
two landmarks. On top of that, the speaker has stopped on the “darkest evening of the
year.” If we understand this to mean the Winter Solstice, then the poem also occurs
directly between two seasons, autumn and winter. Thus, the speaker is physically poised
on the brink between a number of options, suggesting the possibility of choice between
physical worlds, and, later in the poem, between duty to others and a personal wish to rest
in solitude.

However, it's unclear in the end if the speaker chooses to fulfill his or her "promises" or
merely accepts the obligation to do so as an incontrovertible fact of life; that is, whether
he or she actively makes a choice to continue or accepts that there is no choice at all.
Though the speaker seems to indicate in the end that he or she will continue on and keep
his or her promises, this doesn’t seem to be a straightforward decision. In fact, it may not
be a decision at all, but rather an embittered consent to the rules of societal life. The
speaker may very well wish to stay in the “lovely” woods, but is ultimately unable to do
so.

However, we can also read the final stanza as demonstrating that the speaker hasn't left
the woods yet. Although he or she has obligations, there are “miles to go,” and the
dreamy repetition of the final lines could suggest that there are either too many miles left
to travel, or even that the speaker is slipping into sleep—effectively refusing to make a
choice (or implicitly choosing to stay, depending on your interpretation).
 Thus, it is possible to read the entire poem as embodying a moment of hesitation,
wavering between two poles but never leaning toward one or the other. This would
further complicate the outcome of the poem, resisting a definitive reading and suggesting
that the tensions between society and nature, and between obligation and individualism,
are never black-and-white, but constantly in a murky state of flux.

“A Poison Tree” Summary

o The speaker recounts being mad at a friend. The speaker told their friend about this
anger, which subsequently went away. By contrast, when the speaker was angry with an
enemy, the speaker kept quiet. Their anger then increased.

The speaker cultivated this anger as if it were something planted in a garden,

metaphorically nourishing it with fears and tears, both day and night. The speaker's
smiles and other gentle deceptions used to hide the anger, in fact only fed the anger
further.

The anger grew constantly until it became a tree, which bore a bright apple. The speaker's
enemy saw this apple shining and knew it belonged to the speaker.

The enemy snuck into the speaker's garden during the dead of night. The next morning,
the speaker is happy to see this enemy lying dead beneath the tree.

 “A Poison Tree” Themes

Anger and Suppressed Emotion

In "A Poison Tree" the speaker presents a powerful argument against the suppression of
anger. By clearly laying out the benefits of talking about anger, and the consequences of
keeping negative emotions within, the poem implies to the reader that the suppression of
anger is morally dangerous, leading only to more anger or even violence.

The speaker presents two distinct scenarios to illustrate the danger of suppressing anger.
In the first two lines of the poem, the speaker describes admitting his or her "wrath" to a
friend; as soon as the speaker does so, this “wrath” ends. Honesty and frankness, the
speaker makes clear, causes anger to disappear.

By contrast, as described in lines 2 through lines 16 of the poem, the poem details the
negative consequences of suppressed anger. In these lines, the speaker does not open up
about being angry. Instead, the speaker actively tends to his or her wrath as if it were a
garden, watering it with “fears” and “tears,” and “sunning” it with "smiles" and cunning
deceit in a way that indicates a kind of morbid pleasure. The speaker’s careful cultivation
of this rage-garden implies an inability to move on from whatever made the speaker
angry in the first place, as well as the self-perpetuating nature of negative emotions;
anger encourages fear, despair, and deceit—which, in turn, simply nourish more anger.
The suppression of emotion thus begins a cycle of festering negativity that eventually
takes on a life of its own. Through the growth of the tree and its poisonous apple, the
repression of anger is shown to cause a chain reaction that makes the problem far worse
than it would have been had the speaker and the "foe" just talked through their issues.

This poisonous growth contrasts with the simple way in which the anger was eliminated
in the first scenario—when it was "told." Through this contrast, the poem makes clear a
moral choice: either talk and find solutions, or keep quiet and enable the far-reaching,
poisonous effects that come when people hold their angry emotions too close to the chest.
Implicit in the poem, then, is the idea that the root of human conflict grows from the
inability to find common ground through meaningful communication. The fact that, at the
end of the poem, the speaker is "glad" to find the enemy lying dead beneath the tree
shows the way in which, in the second scenario, the anger increasingly dominates the
way the speaker sees other human beings—the speaker becomes a host for the growth of
anger, which feeds on others' pain. The poem, then, suggests and warns against the fact
that anger is an all-consuming emotion when allowed to grow unchecked.

The simplicity of the lines and the use of extended metaphor—the growth of the tree
reflects the growth of the anger—also makes the message of the poem applicable well
 beyond the immediate conflict between the speaker and the foe. In fact, these two figures
can be read as allegorical representations of different parts of humanity itself, showing
the way that war and hatred develop from misplaced anger. This more general reading of
the poem's moral message is further amplified by the clear allusion between the poison
tree of the poem to the tree in the garden of Eden. The poem can therefore be read as an
argument against the psychological suppression of anger on both the personal and even
the societal level.

"A Poison Tree" ultimately makes a powerful argument in favor of opening up and
trusting in the human capacity for empathy and understanding. The alternative, the poem
argues, is far more dangerous

"The Village Schoolmaster" Summary

The poem "The Village Schoolmaster" is actually a fragment of a longer poem called "The
Deserted Village," which is a description and social commentary on a village that has been
abandoned by its residents. The final line of "The Village Schoolmaster" refers to the
abandonment of the village when it says: "The very spot where many a time he triumph'd is
forgotten." It was first published in 1770. Although the full poem was quite popular, it was also
controversial due to its disparagement of the pursuit of excessive wealth and disdain of the
corrupting influence of luxury.

"The Village Schoolmaster" opens with a description of the fence and the shrubs that surround
the school building. It then zooms in on the schoolmaster. In appearance he is severe and stern.
In other words, he looks as if he is a strict disciplinarian. In his expression students can read if
the day has been difficult.

The schoolmaster often tells jokes, and the students laugh to please him, whether or not they
think that the jokes are funny. If they see him frown they are concerned and whisper to each
other about it. However, the poem emphasizes that he is a kind man, and if he is ever severe, it is
only because he is so concerned that the students learn their lessons.

The entire village is impressed by the schoolmaster's education. He can not only read and write,
but he can also do arithmetic, is skilled at debate, and has an impressive vocabulary. The simple
rustic villagers marvel how one person can know so much.

The time during which the schoolmaster was famous as a man of learning is in the past, though,
and the school where he taught is forgotten.