<P> Frost wrote the poem in June 1922 at his house in Shaftsbury, Vermont . He had been up the entire night writing the long poem "New Hampshire" and had finally finished when he realized morning had come . He went out to view the sunrise and suddenly got the idea for "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". He wrote the new poem "about the snowy evening and the little horse as if I'd had a hallucination" in just "a few minutes without strain". </P> <P> The poem is written in iambic tetrameter in the Rubaiyat stanza created by Edward Fitzgerald . Each verse (save the last) follows an a-a-b-a rhyming scheme, with the following verse's a's rhyming with that verse's b, which is a chain rhyme (another example is the terza rima used in Dante's Inferno .) Overall, the rhyme scheme is AABA - BBCB - CCDC - DDDD . </P> <P> The text of the poem describes the thoughts of a lone rider (the speaker), pausing at night in his travel to watch snow falling in the woods . It ends with him reminding himself that, despite the loveliness of the view, "I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep ." </P> <P> In the early morning of November 23, 1963, Sid Davis of Westinghouse Broadcasting reported the arrival of President John F. Kennedy's casket to the White House . As Frost was one of the President's favorite poets, Davis concluded his report with a passage from this poem but was overcome with emotion as he signed off . </P>

The woods are lovely dark and deep and i have promises to keep