The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, 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,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

In my nine+ years of English and German literature lessons and the following four years at university, I’ve had a whole lot of time reading and dwelling on poetry.

Many of the works I dismissed quickly and cannot even remember but some of them I hold oddly dear to my heart. Wordsworth, Blake and Keats will all appear here, as well as Shakespeare, Rossetti and Auden and so many more.

Today, I want to start with one poem that is the most dear to me though: ‘The Road Not Taken‘ by Robert Frost.

Robert Frost was an American poet, living in both America and Great Britain in the years of 1874 until 1963. He was of a rural, farmer’s background and so a lot of his works are set in the same frame. While working as a farmhand and in factories, he attended college for some years as well. In his later years, Frost even took a teaching position himself, for example at Amhurst College, Ma.

During his time in Britain, surrounded by a circle of friends, he wrote some of his best poems (and I can totally understand that!).

‘The Road Not Taken‘ is my favourite poem of his and possibly his most famous too.

In high school, we watched ‘Dead Poets Society‘ (possibly my favourite movie of all times!), in which said poem is prominently featured, serving as an inspirational piece of literature to the students, whom English teacher John Keating is trying to turn into responsible, self-thinking individuals.

That is the reading and view I’d like to find this poem and not the ironical one that is being wildly discussed everywhere.

It is a poem using the two roads as a metaphor for decisions or rather options in life. You can only choose one of them, no matter how badly you’d like to explore both as each of the roads promises a journey and destination so appealing.

By choosing one, you ultimately leave the other option behind, knowing that you can never change what is happening from now on.

However, I do not believe that ‘The Road Not Taken‘ is not about choosing ‘the road less travelled by’ and hence choosing a less common approach to life.

I’d rather believe it is about making decisions and being in a position to do so at all.

My general religious belief is that God has everything pre-planned for each single one of us and that no decision we make is one we make by ourselves. I think this poem is very much about accepting that we cannot always have anything in life that we want. ‘The Road Not Taken‘ might stand for something that we have to give up in order to find happiness in what we have.

If you‘d like to read more about this matter, you can find biographical info on the poet here (this website will also link you to a couple of Frost‘s other works). Of course, there is a Wikipedia page on Robert Frost too from which I scored some of my information on him.

EDIT. Yeah, I just realized I put this up a day early. *facepalm*