Life

             Life: A Long And Winding Road.
             Through out life, we encounter many obstacles and joys in our "journey" towards death. Some people rush through their lives and others actually stop to take in their surroundings and enjoy life. In Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls", the two poets represent people in life as a traveler on his way to some unknown destination. In Frost's poem, the traveler wishes he could stop for a while to just observe the peacefulness and tranquility of the woods (life). Longfellow's poem discusses how we all go through life and many different situations, but the sea (life) still ebbs and flows. These two poems, although written in different eras, have striking similarities and differences.
             The settings in such poems as "The Tide Rises The Tide Falls" and Stopping By Woods ." are very vital to the message trying to be conveyed. In Frost's Poem, the setting is a deep dark forest filled with white fluffy snow. The setting shows how beautiful life is, and how we should all take at least one moment to notice it. In Longfellow's poem, the setting is a remote coastline with light brown sand and white waves foaming up against it. This setting shows that no matter what happens life will go on, just like the sea. Both settings have often been compared to life itself. The deep dark forest that we travel through or the tide that waits to "efface" our footprints from the earth are what these poets use to represent life. .
             The two poems, although similar in many ways, are told from different points of view. " The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls" is told in the third person. This makes it easy to get the point across that life goes on around the traveler. In "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" the speaker is the traveler. In this way, the speaker observes all of his surroundings and supports the authors point to stop and enjoy life, even for only a moment.