History of the Poem

Originally written in 1912, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was published in 1923 as part of Frost's collection "New Hampshire". Story goes that he went out to view the sunrise after writing all night and suddenly got the idea for the poem.

This was said to be by Frost himself as "my best bid for remembrance". Frost goes on to say that he wrote about the sunrise experience and how hallucinatory it was.

Eric Whitacre first used this poem for music in 2000. However, due to a legal dispute with the Frost estate over the use of the poem, he asked poet Charles Silvestri to write alternative lyrics. The result was one of their most celebrated collaborations, "Sleep". In January 2019 the Frost poem entered the public domain, finally allowing Whitacre to perform the piece as it was originally composed.

At the funeral of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, his son Justin, rephrased the last stanza of this poem in his eulogy: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. He has kept his promises and earned his sleep."