A POEM FOR SEPTEMBER FIRST - THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

I know there are many who would list The Road Not Taken as one of their favorite poems. We’ve all had an instance in which we had to make a significant decision. In my case, I hadn’t yet come upon the poem when that decision was made. When I did find the poem I had quite a jolt when I read those last two lines – the lines that everyone remembers. There is a lot of discussion among literary critics and deconstructionists as to what Frost meant in the last three lines. Who cares what he meant! It is an evocative poem and it works for many people like me. 

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

Douglas Adams
English humorist & science fiction novelist (1952 - 2001)

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.