The poem is set in a countryside in a winter evening when the narrator stops on his way between the snow-covered woods and a frozen lake to take a look at the beauty of the woods. “The darkest evening of the year” probably indicates that it was the longest night of the year – the night with the most hours of darkness. In that case, it is 21st or 22nd December, when the winter solstice occurs in the northern hemisphere. The atmosphere was calm and serene. Our narrator could even hear the sound of the downy flake and the mild wind.