Today, I employed the Google Ngram Viewer, an online phrase-usage graphing tool, to chart the yearly count of the words fate and luck as found in over 5.2 million books digitised by Google up to 2012. The results may be seen below.

Why has the word fate become progressively less popular among authors since 1800? And why did the word luck become increasingly popular with authors until the 1930s, take a downturn until the mid 1970s, when it started growing more popular again?


Alberico Collina

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROST

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.

 
I never tire of reading this poem.

Its lines have a magical beauty to them that both haunts and seduces.

Who owns these silent woods in which we are riding?

Why do we think we know him?

What are these dark woods in which we find ourselves?

Why are we drawn to them?

Why do we stop to watch them ‘fill up with snow’ on this, ‘the darkest evening of the year’?

What are the ‘promises to keep’ before we ‘sleep’?

I don’t know if there’s an answer to these questions.

I don’t even know why this poem means so much to me.

All I know is that when I find myself in woods and night falls, the words of this poem tend to surface in my mind.

And thinking about them makes the way home seem shorter.

 

Alberico Collina