I recently came across the poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, and really enjoyed it, so I thought I would share it here!

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

On the surface, this seems like a very simple poem, speaking of a traveler and his horse stopping on a snowy forest, on an unknown plot of land. The woods here represent wildness, and nature in its purest form- they are past the outskirts of the village, past the bounds of human settlement. Still, the speaker acknowledges his humanness and worldly responsibilities, sadly admitting that he must keep them. However, this poem has a darker undertone- and there are other reasons that the speaker cannot stay in the woods. They are to be admired from afar- if the traveler becomes trapped in the snow and loses his way, he may well freeze and die. The horse, representing human society, seems confused at his owner’s admiration of the woods- representing society’s inability to appreciate nature in its fullest, rawest capacity.

-Vaidehi B.

Content Warning: This poem contains violent descriptions.

I recently read the poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, and found it a heartbreaking but realistic message of what war is like, especially the World Wars. Read it below!

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
– My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen was a soldier during World War I, and later in his life, he suffered from severe PTSD. This poem details the horrors of chemical agents used in the war- such as sulfur and mustard gas. Owen speaks in gruesome detail of how he watched one of his fellow soldiers die from breathing in this gas. At the end, he also rebukes the supporters of the war (and all wars), saying that they know nothing of what war is really like, and simply send young men off to their horrible deaths. He mocks the saying dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. This is a patriotic Latin saying, meaning it is sweet and honorable to die for your country.

-Vaidehi B.

“Mirror” by Sylvia Plath is one of my favorite poems. Plath’s writing style is calm and matter of fact, but the poem is still filled with beautiful symbolism and imagery. Read it below!

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful ‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

To me, this poem symbolizes a fear of aging and death. It is told from the perspective of a cold and objective mirror- whose owner looks into it constantly, and is constantly horrified by what she sees there. However, the mirror is not completely objective- it only reflects physicality, so the owner does not gain a true sense of themselves when looking into it. The poem beautifully describes the passage of time- the mirror details how it has witnessed the woman that is its owner pass through childhood and into adulthood, becoming more and more horrified by her age. Plath uses the descriptor “a terrible fish” to show how the idea of mortality horrifies the woman. Plath also tackles themes of feminism in this poem- youth and beauty are very valued in a patriarchal society, and women are expected to conform to very strict beauty standards.

-Vaidehi B.