SOURCE: Greiner, Donald J. “Robert Frost's Dark Woods and the Function of Metaphor.” In Frost: Centennial Essays III, edited by the Committee on the Frost Centennial of the University of Southern Mississippi, pp. 373-88. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1978.

In the following excerpt, Greiner discusses Frost's use of the image of the woods as a metaphor in his poetry.

We should begin with a discussion of the spellbinding power of the woods because most interpretations of poems like “Stopping by Woods,” “The Sound of Trees,” and “Come In” comment upon the poet-figure's almost mystical attraction to the trees.¹ “Stopping by Woods” is the focal point of this particular reading of Frost because it contains most of the elements to be found in the group of poems that inspires the interpretation. Finding himself alone between the opposing worlds of nature and man, the traveler stops to watch the woods...