[Dawnstorm]

Originally Posted by asad hussain

Stanza # 04
Why can’t the poet wait to enjoy the beauty of the woods?
He can’t wait to enjoy the beauty of the woods because he too many responsibilities to fulfill, and has a long distance to travel before he can rest for the night.

"because he too many responsibilities to fulfill": you forgot to include a verb, here. ("to fulfill" is a verb, but it's not the main verb of the clause)

Why does he repeat the third line?
He repeats the third line to make a strong claim to be the most celebrated instance of repetition in English poetry.The first "And miles to go before I sleep" stays within the boundaries of literalness set forth by the rest of the poem. We may suspect, as we have up to this point, that the poem implies more than it says outright, but we can't insist on it; the poem has gone by so fast, and seemed so straightforward. Then comes the second "And miles to go before I sleep," like a soft yet penetrating gong; it can be neither ignored nor forgotten. The sound it makes is "Ahhh." And we must read the verses again and again and offer trenchant remarks and explain the "Ahhh" in words far inferior to the poem. For the last "miles to go" now seems like life; the last "sleep" now seems like death.

If I read you correctly, you are saying that Frost (the poet) repeats the line to foreground the presence of a non-literal meaning, but not the meaning itself. In other words, the repetition gives the reader/listener of the poem the opportunity to go beyond the literal into the figurative.

This is a very interesting interesting interpretation. (Like Tdol, I'm not sure about the first sentence, and I'm uncertain I understand the "Ahhh"-part, although the "miles to go" vs. "sleep" explation at the end somewhat explains it.

I have another idea for you that may support what you said (especailly the "miles" vs. "sleep" argument):

The poem has a strict rhyme scheme. The first three stanzas go: aaba bbcb ccdc. Three lines rhyme; the line that doesn't rhyme provides the rhyme for the next stanza. There are just enough stanzas to establish a pattern. (You need two stanzas to see that the non-rhyming line rhymes with the rhyme in the following stanza, and another stanza to make sure it's intentional and not a coincidence.) The fourth stanza is the last. Since there is no stanza after the last one, the third line cannot have a none-rhyming line. Now, instead of having just three lines, or just four rhyming lines, the poet chose to repeat the last line. This gives a powerful feeling of "closure"; not only is there no new rhyme, there isn't even a new line. The first "sleep" disrupts the expetation (we would expect a non-rhyming line); the repetition wraps up the poem. (The effect is very much like you described it; that's just the technical side of it.)

Which letters have been repeated in the last stanza?
The letters o and e have been repeated in the last stanza.

This is an odd question, since poetry works on syllables and sounds rather than letters.

Since the rhyme is [...i:p] in the last stanza, the repeated letters that are most obvious would be: "e" (as "ee", sounding [i:]; it also appears in "lovely" or "promises", but the letter sounds differently there) and "p".

It's true that the letter "o" is repeated a lot, but it sound differently in "woods", "to", "lovely" and "promises". I'm not sure what the question is about.

Why have they been repeated?
They have been repeated to produce a profound impression.

Since I don't really understand question 3, I can't really answer that one either. "Profound impression" is rather vague, but considering the question itself isn't exactly clear, it might just work.

***

The below might go beyond school assignments, and I've simplified it somewhat. Read only if you're interested. It's not about letters, it's about sounds.

One thing I did notice about the last stanze is that you use your lips a lot to form the consonants: Linguists name letters according to how they are acticulated, and where they are articulated. Bilabials are consonants that are articulated at the lips: they are "m", "b", and "p". Group them together, and you have a lot of them in the poem.

"m" is a nasal. This means the air flows through the nose to produce the sound. The "m" sounds softer than either "b" or "p".

"b" and "p" are plosives; that means that the air is released in an "explosive" manner (other plosives, but not bilabials, are "k", "g", "t" and "d"). "b" is voiced, "p" is not.

So you have a progression from "soft" to "harsh" sounding consonants, articulated at the lips: m --> b --> p

Due to the rhyme: [...i:p] all lines end on the harsh "p". The only time the harsh "p" occurs in the middle of a line is at the beginning of the key-word "promises". (This helps make the word stand out.) The weaker relatives occur within the lines: "but", "before", "miles", "promises".

The consonant effect is enhanced by the "vowel" effect: within the poem "dark" vowals prevail (a, o, ai, u...) while all lines end on a bright, long "i:". (Notice how the last stanza doesn't have an "e" sound at all, like "bed", or an "ei" sound like "late"?) Again, the word "promises" is the exception: it has an "I"-sound at the end, and possibly another one after the "m", depending on how much you stress the word when reading. (I say "proməsIz" when I read the poem.)

The effect this has is to make the line-endings more forceful than the lines themselves, and to make the word "promises" stand out.