Composer Margaret Bonds’s setting of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost is an ‘African American woman – settings of a White man’s words’ (Dr. Michael Cooper).
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Hear Justin Hopkins & Jeanne-Minette Cilliers perform Margaret Bonds song.
