Compare and Contrast Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"?

There is a strong similarity between Frost's "The Road Not
Taken" and his "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening." In both poems the speaker is on a
journey and comes to a stop. In both poems he indicates the season of the year, which is
fall in "The Road Not Taken" and early winter in "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening."
In both poems the speaker is all alone and seems to be having troubled feelings and
emotions. Finally, in both poems the speaker (who is presumably Frost himself) has to
move on because he cannot remain all alone in the woods. In "Stopping By Woods on a
Snowy Evening" he moves on because he remembers he has obligations to fulfill, while in
"The Road Not Taken" he moves on because he has to make a choice of one road or the
other. There is very little difference in the motivations of the speakers in the two
poems. The moods of both poems are very similar. The speaker seems lonely, puzzled,
fascinated by the beauty of nature but forced to attend to the business of
living.

Frost maintained that all writing, including
poetry, should be dramatic. He makes these two poems dramatic by suggesting that the
speakers both have internal conflicts. In "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" the
speaker would like to stay by the woods much longer and enjoy the silence and the visual
beauty. In "The Road Not Taken" the speaker would like to follow both roads but cannot
do so because they "diverge" in entirely different directions.