This is probably my favorite Frost poem, if not my favorite poem I’ve read. There’s something about Frost that I love. I think it’s his ability to be extremely dark, but in an underhanded way. Like when people quote “The Road Not Taken” completely unaware that the poem is not an optimistic outlook on the future.

Desert Places:

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it – it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less –
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
WIth no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars – on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.