Robert Frost, America’s Great Poet, Writes And Signs One of the Most Famous Lines in American Poetry

“And miles to go before I sleep.”

Robert Frost is perhaps the most popular and critically respected American poets of the twentieth century, authoring such memorable poems as Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Fire and Ice, and The Road Not Taken.  He was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, an extraordinary achievement. According to “Contemporary Literary Criticism”, Frost became one of America’s rare “public literary figures, almost an artistic institution.” He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont and spoke at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy.

Frost wrote Stopping by Woods in June 1922 at his house in Shaftsbury, Vermont. He had been up the entire night writing the long poem New Hampshire and had finally finished when he realized morning had come. He went out to view the sunrise and suddenly got the idea for Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. He wrote the new poem “about the snowy evening and the little horse as if I’d had a hallucination” in just “a few minutes without strain.”

This poem is one of the most famous poems by an American. In the early morning of November 23, 1963, Sid Davis of Westinghouse Broadcasting reported the arrival of President John F. Kennedy’s casket to the White House. As Frost was one of the President’s favorite poets, Davis concluded his report with a passage from this poem but was overcome with emotion as he signed off.

Book inscribed and signed, “West-Running Brook,” by Robert Frost, with an autograph quotation, dated 1938 from Breadloaf: “And miles to go before I sleep.  Robert Frost.”

This is the only time we have ever seen Frost sign a quotation from this great poem.