Stanza:

1. Stanza: It’s an arrangement of a certain number of lines, usually four or more, sometimes having a fixed length, meter, or rhyme scheme, forming a division of a poem.

2. Iambic pentameter: Iambic pentameter is the name given to a line of verse that consists of five iambs (an iamb being one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed, such as "before"). It has been a fundamental building block of poetry in English, used in many poems by many poets from the English Renaissance to the present day. As with any meter, it is not necessary that every line should be entirely slavish in following the rhythm; in fact, being so could make the poem sound dull. Swapping, dropping or adding stressed and unstressed syllables will lend variety to a line without changing the underlying rhythm. Poems in iambic pentameter may or may not rhyme. Those that are written in continuous lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter are said to be in blank verse, while rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter may be called "heroic couplets", particularly when each couplet closes a thought or sentence on its second line.

3. Stopping by woods on a snowy evening Four almost identically constructed stanzas. Within the four lines of each stanza, the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme. . For example, in the third stanza, queer, near, and year all rhyme, but lake rhymes with shake, mistake, and flake in the following stanza.

4. Relating sight, meaning and thought • This stanza relates sight and thought that must be interpreted by the reader. • What the author sees can be made into an image. • What the reader interprets can vary from beauty, civilization vs. nature or foreboding. 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 hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.

5. Why I see foreboding • There is a sense of apprehension as if the person in poem fears discovery. • Often ‘The darkest evening of the year’ can either be interpreted as X-Mas or • The literal full-of-fear type of darkness. • In truth, I choose to see the foreboding instead of “loveliness”. Why foreboding? My little horse must think it queer 5 To stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.

6. The appreciation of nature vs. the urgency of responsibility. • While I envision the motion of the horse as a sign of danger or wariness, • The subject sees and allows to see the snow sweeping around. • The darkness and the “un-known” of nature is what I imagine as foreboding yet alluring. • But it is civilization that calls in line 15 and 16... Civilization vs. Nature The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep, 15 And miles to go before I sleep.

7. The imagery in this poem is subject to interpretation. • The last two lines of every stanza are subject to the perception of either the horse or the person, • The first two lines are always subject to the perception of us and, • There fore are about the horse or the person. • This poem has depth because it offers many perspectives that can be interpreted by each reader differently. What do you see? He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow. (line 3 and 4) Between the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year. (line 7 and 8) he only other sounds the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake. (11 and 12)