Chapter 4, Stopping By the Woods and Other Places Summary

Opening his chapter entitled "Stopping By Woods and Other Places", Untermeyer presents the poem entitled "Hyla Brook", a sonnet with an extra line, summing up its thesis in the 15th line. The poem describes a brook that has dried up, either retreating underground, so that one remembers its movement and the plants that grew alongside it the same way one remembers snow and the sleigh-bells that ran across it when they are out of season. He describes the leaves that now line the bottom of the dried bed and closes the poem by stating that "we love the things we love for what they are".

"The West-Running Brook" is another idyll, and a conversation between a man and a wife who come upon a brook running west where all...