He had been up the entire night writing the long poem "New Hampshire" from the poetry collection of the same name, and had finally finished when he realized morning had come.

"[3] The text of the poem reflects the thoughts of a lone wagon driver (the narrator), on the night of the winter solstice, "the darkest evening of the year", pausing at dusk in his travel to watch snow falling in the woods.

The poem is written in iambic tetrameter in the Rubaiyat stanza created by Edward FitzGerald, who adopted the style from Hakim Omar Khayyam, the 12th-century Persian poet and mathematician.

[5] In the early morning of November 23, 1963, Sid Davis of Westinghouse Broadcasting reported the arrival of President John F. Kennedy's casket at the White House.

[6][7] At the funeral of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, on October 3, 2000, his eldest son, Justin, rephrased the last stanza of this poem in his eulogy: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep.