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Robert FrostA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Despite the deceptive simplicity of the language, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” consists of four stanzas written in a rigid interlocking Rubaiyat form. This type of poetry is made up of an unlimited number of quatrains, or four-line stanzas, in iambic tetrameter with a fixed repeating rhyme scheme.
In a traditional Rubaiyat poem, each line will be exactly 10 syllables, following the iambic pentameter rhythm. However, Frost’s poem deviated by using tetrameter, or eight-syllable lines. Like a traditional Rubaiyat, the first two lines and the fourth line of the first stanza all rhyme. In the second stanza, the first two lines and the fourth line will rhyme with the third line of the first stanza. That pattern will continue as the first, second, and fourth line of the third stanza rhyme with the third line of the second stanza, and so forth. Thus, the rhyme scheme is as follows:
AABA BBCB CCDC DDDD
The only deviation to the classic form is the length of the lines, as noted above, and the final rhyming quatrain with its double repeated lines at the very end, though the seamless rhythm is maintained throughout.
By Robert Frost
Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost
After Apple-Picking
Robert Frost
A Time To Talk
Robert Frost
Birches
Robert Frost
Dust of Snow
Robert Frost
Fire and Ice
Robert Frost
Mending Wall
Robert Frost
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
October
Robert Frost
Once by the Pacific
Robert Frost
Out, Out—
Robert Frost
Putting in the Seed
Robert Frost
The Death of the Hired Man
Robert Frost
The Gift Outright
Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
West-Running Brook
Robert Frost