The winter solstice is the LONGEST night of the year. That does not necessarily mean it is the darkest. A winter solstice with a full moon and no cloud cover could be a lot brighter than 23 January that’s completely overcast.
In poetic language, that would be a reasonable way of putting it. I’m not saying that’s what he means, but it’s an interpretation that is supported by the text. I personally think of it in a more figurative manner.
And while we’re at it, the solstice also isn’t the earliest sunset of the year: That would be some time around mid-December (precise date depending on the latitude where the poem is set). But one must allow for some poetic license, as well as for some ignorance of a not-widely-known bit of astronomical fact.
True enough, and stop thinking faster than me or – well, you know.
I still don’t see any reason to think Frost was suggesting the (probably fictional) incident occurred on the solstice. The man knew how to spell. If he’d meant longest evening, he’d have said that. He just meant that it was a dark day.
Because that’s why Frost won’t fucking *do *it already. It would inconvenience the horse. 
The part about the horse are my favorite lines in the poem. The horse sees nothing enthralling about the woods, he just wants to get where he’s going.
“His gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake”
Though to me, the horse would really be saying, “Hey, dude, let’s get a move on. It’s cold out here and I got a date with a bag of oats and the filly in the next stall.”
You could argue though, that the proceeding paragraph “My little horse must think it queer” means that the author is not prone to stopping and contemplating. It makes “the darkest evening of the year” somewhat special. There is just something about the woods, that night, that draws him in.
Depends on your view of God. If you believe God is against suicide, you might think
God would turn a blind eye to those who try it, or merely that a suicidal person is cutting himself off from God. It being “the darkest evening of the year” may be both literal and metaphorical.
“Obviously”? :dubious:
More seriously, the horse is a metaphor for the entire mundane community and world of plodders, doers, non-suicidal, non-aware(?) people to whom Frost has made promises he feels obliged to keep. Without the horse to gently urge him to get back there, he’d have nothing at hand to prevent him from entering the dark and deep woods. As glum as he feels, he is still not deep enough in despair to forget those miles to go.
I too thought the suicide interpretation was the conventional pedagogical angle, not something dreamed up by the goth kids in class. But I also like the point about it being ambiguous and up to the readers interpretation.
I love this thread and everybody’s ideas. Old stuff for me being of that generation that revered Frost but you’ve all made it fresh again.
Yet another argument against the suicide angle: This is the same guy who wrote Out, out–. If he had wanted to write a poem about suicide or the contemplation thereof, he would have just come out and written it. He clearly had no objection to going dark, out in the open.
“Little” is so far from le mot juste it has always destroyed the poem for me. I’ve known a lot of people who had strong feelings of affection for their horses but no one who ever went on about about their “little horsey”. But what other word could you plug in? Such a short and perfect poem to be so crippled by one word. I hate poetry.
Interesting discussion here:
So it’s a little horse with harness bells, and there’s snow, and a busy man with promises to keep and no time to play has stuff to do miles away; he knows where a particular homeowner is at that moment – is that guy sleeping or awake? – and it’s the darkest evening, something Solstice, something Christmas Eve…
How about thinking of the phrase, Little people and their little ideas?"
It suggests that they are not of much consequence.
A shake of jingle bells on a harness is hardly a great bell tolling one out of their revery. And the must-dos of the world aren’t exactly what he wants to dwell on at the moment.
Would that work?
Damn you, Time Lord, that was my next thread!
Morgan horses, native to New England, are known for their small size, intelligence, surprising strength, and versatility. To call a Morgan “a big little horse” is both very common and a compliment.
So why are you posting in a thread about a poem?
But “leak” doesn’t quite rhyme. “Leap” does–but then we’re back to the suicide theme…
To some extent, threads like this help me understand why Bob Dylan almost always gives the same stock answer to every fan who asks what a particular song means: “Whatever you think it means, that’s what it means to you.”
I’m NOT saying there are no wrong or even stupid misreadings or misinterpretations of literature- just that, even IF Robert Frost wasn’t thinking at all about suicide when he wrote that poem, he might well be pleased if it got people thinking in interesting ways that he hadn’t considered.
IF someone out there (maybe multiple someones) took inspiration from the poem, and thought “Even though I had considered killing myself, I realize now that there’s a lot left I need to do with my life,” I don’t think Robert Frost’s reaction would be “You idiot, that’s not what I meant at all.”