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The Road Not Taken. By Robert Frost. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both. And be one traveler, long I stood. And looked down one as far as I could. To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair,
"The Road Not Taken" is a narrative poem by Robert Frost, first published in the August 1915 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, and later published as the first poem in the 1916 poetry collection, Mountain Interval. Its central theme is the divergence of paths, both literally and figuratively, although its interpretation is noted for being complex ...
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—. I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem.
Robert Frost wrote “The Road Not Taken” as a joke for a friend, the poet Edward Thomas. When they went walking together, Thomas was chronically indecisive about which road they ought to take and—in retrospect—often lamented that they should, in fact, have taken the other one.
Although commonly interpreted as a celebration of rugged individualism, the poem actually contains multiple different meanings. The speaker in the poem, faced with a choice between two roads, takes the road "less traveled," a decision which he or she supposes "made all the difference."
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
The image of stepped-on leaves turning black represents the notion that the road less traveled is preferable. Taking the final couplet into consideration as well, the poem is commonly read as a testament to the unconventionally lived life.
Why did Robert Frost choose the road “less traveled”? Robert Frost’s speaker chose the road less traveled as he had to make a decision. Otherwise, he would get stuck at that place forever.
And the road not taken, of course, is the road one didn’t take—which means that the title passes over the “less traveled” road the speaker claims to have followed in order to foreground the road he never tried.
First, there is no less-traveled road in this poem; it isn’t even an option. Next, the poem seems more concerned with the question of how the concrete present (yellow woods, grassy roads covered in fallen leaves) will look from a future vantage point.
