SOURCE: Meyers, Jeffrey. “Michigan and the Lecture Circuit, 1921–1926.” In Robert Frost: A Biography, pp. 167–189. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996.

In the following excerpt, Meyers discusses literary references in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

The masterpiece in New Hampshire is the justly famous “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Like “The Road Not Taken,” it suggests vast thematic implications through a lucid narrative. And like its predecessor, it has the same technical perfection as the poems by Frost's greatly admired touchstones: Herrick, Shirley and Collins. Frost said that he wrote this poem, “my best bid for remembrance,” right off at dawn, after completing “New Hampshire”—though he later revised the second stanza. The most amazing thing about this work is that three of the fifteen lines (the last line repeats the previous one) are transformations from other poems. “He gives his harness bells a shake” comes from...