Context

You know this tune, right? It's from Robert Frost's famous poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

In fact, these lines make up the final stanza of the poem, where the speaker moves past the snowy woods and focuses on himself and his own situation. In the first three stanzas, we see the narrator (and his trusty steed) stopped in the woods and admiring the surroundings. He muses about the owner of the woods and listens carefully to the sounds of his horse and the "downy flake."

When it's time for him to leave, these lines are what go through his head.

The first line seems innocent enough. Sure, it sounds a little strange for something dark and deep to be lovely, but ever since the Romantics, we should be used to dealing with the sublime in poetry. The next line, though, switches things up. The "but" at the beginning implies that he had other plans...and we're not talking about building a snowman.

Then we get the famous repetition of the final line, and if you read "sleep" as "death," you'll understand why Frost wasn't the simple New England poet people tend to think of him as.

Where you've heard it

Oh, everywhere.

People love to change this one to "miles to go before we sleep" to indicate how much work is still left to do. We're guessing they didn't read "sleep" as "death."

Pretentious Factor

If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.

The figurative language may be a bit chilling, but it's hardly pretentious.