The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken

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 marked 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. 

Robert Frost

This poem has left on me a very deep impression for it is the first poem I have ever analysed before. And also, i met with lots of difficulties in analysing it that time, and soon later I had to analyse it a few more times after learning more about the different poetic devices. The first time I analysed this poem, I had no choice but to google for the meaning of this poem because it was considered quite complicated for me. Of course, i started off by reading the definitions by Wikipedia. It claimed that Robert Frost had merely chosen between two different roads that were equally worn out. However, some websites whereby the poems were analysed by the public claimed that Robert Frost was depicting the choice of one's life, whereby he chose to be a bad person and regretted it as he had sighed. Because it was meant to be an assignment and I had to make a choice, I decided that the definition by Wikipedia seemed more logical, and copied its points and paraphrased it a little.


Now, I still think that Wikipedia's definition was correct. This is because the two roads were supposed to be the same, as he was sorry for not being able to try out both roads because he was one person, and that the road had bent in the undergrowth, which meant that even if the roads were different, he couldn't have seen it clearly. I personally feel that he just felt like calling a road "less travelled by" and decided to walk on it, maybe because he felt that the grass there was more hardy and he had to "punish" it by passing through it, and decided he could try the other road another time. However, later he realizes that there will be more diverged roads after this, and that he would never come back to the first two diverged roads again. I believe that his last stanza actually means that he, having labelled a road as "less travelled by", and having passed through it, decided that passing through only one road had made a difference, whereby he has the slight sense of regret for not passing through the other road, and not that he has chosen "the wrong road in life" as some websites have said.

I have learnt from this, the first poem I have ever analysed, and the poem which I have analysed the most number of times, never to judge a poem by its cover, and never to attempt slacking through googling for "answers"; but to analyse it very carefully by myself, to pick out all the important details in it. Most importantly, I have learnt that a poem could be in fact judged from many different viewpoints, and I guess my "definition" is not 100% correct, as much as the other definitions are not 100% correct, but we are after all, all correct over certain points.