Description:

Frost Robert

Robert Frost Signed Handwritten Stanza From Stopping by Woods On A Snowy Evening.

 

A superb Robert Frost handwritten and signed stanza from his famous poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, measures 4" x 5."  . This phenomenal piece was inscribed to Ethel Gamon in 1949, who then inserted the page into a special leather binding for her First Printing copy of Complete Poems by Robert Frost. The page was later removed from the book and matted with a portrait of Frost. The lovely presentation has a completed size of 13" x 17". The book will accompany this lot for provenance, which has been annotated by Ethel Gamon's continual reflections on Frost's poetry. Page 275 in particular, the page  which includes  Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, has a note from her acknowledging receipt of Frosts stanza in 1949.

 

The autographed signed stanza is shown below:

 

"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.

Robert Frost

To Ethel Gamon"

 

(Ethel wrote the date along the bottom of the poem stanza.)

 

The full poem as was published by Frost is shown below:

 

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.

 

 

This poem was so well received by critics and scholars that it created an enormous amount of controversy regarding the interpretation of the poem.  Robert Frost couldn’t figure out what the fuss was all about. All he had done was write a nice, little, lyrical poem about stopping by the woods on a snowy evening, and now critics the world over were trying to dig beneath the layers of his words to find the deep, hidden, symbolic meanings he had placed there. Scholars, critics, and university professors, who all considered themselves to be more learned than the great unwashed, began writing papers to literary journals and lecturing hard in class that Mister Robert Frost had written a great metaphor about the specter of death. It had long been their opinions that the mention of snow was a symbol of death, and now Frost had proven their point for them. It wasn’t “miles to go before I sleep.” It was “miles to go before they lay me in my grave.”

 

And some of the bolder scholars even began spreading the world that Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening was, of all things, a suicide poem. The great Robert Frost, the winner of four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry was contemplating suicide.

Then one amongst them came up with a brilliant idea. Why not ask Robert Frost himself what he meant?

He sat down with the poet and said, “Sir, what great, hidden, symbolic meaning did you have behind the repetition of the last two lines: miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep. Mr. John Ciardi believes you are writing about death.” Frost smiled and answered, “Well, I suppose people think I lie awake nights worrying about what people like (John) Ciardi of the Saturday Review writes and publishes about me. Now Ciardi is making Stopping by the Woods a death poem. Well, it would be like this if it were. I’d say, ’This is all very lovely, but I must be getting on to heaven.’”

“Then what are you writing about?”

Frost shrugged and said, “What I’m saying is: ‘It’s all very nice, but I must be getting along, getting home.

A wonderful, extremely scarce autographed stanza by Robert Frost from one of his highly controversial, and well-loved poems. Outstanding presentation!


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