The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
I absolutely can’t believe I’ve never posted this poem. Granted, it’s not my favorite and I think its excessive usage around graduation is a little scary. Perhaps I always assumed I’d posted it? Anyway, when I can successfully remove all thoughts of trite greeting cards and read the poem, I do think it’s quite lovely.
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
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 traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Ah, the burden of classic literature, almost impossible to read for the first time (even when it is our first time). My father used to recite this when I was little, along with the equally well-trodden “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” (Miles to go before I sleep …)