"The Road Not Taken" Robert Frost poem male voice "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood"

Описание

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.

Robert's Frost's "The Road Not Taken" was published in 1916 in the book Mountain Interval.

Why a sigh at the poem’s end? Does the poet regret something?

Probably no regret. I view the poem's speaker as the poet himself who picked the unconventional road of poetry, and this is a great poem. Any author of such a work should be proud going down this road!

Instead of detecting regret, I detect a tone of satisfaction at the end: "I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference."

Then why sigh? Probably due to the frustration that we have to make hard choices. We are curious about where the other road goes. (Or other "roads" plural. The poet simplifies by saying two roads when in fact every life has many crossroads.)

So the sigh comes from curiosity, not regret. Or here is the best interpretation of "sigh": it is a sigh of relief that he picked the right road!

The poem has another ambiguity (or unclear part)--the poet says the two roads “equally lay,” one road “just as fair” as the other. But then the poet says one road was more grassy, indicating that fewer people went down that grassy.

The two roads look the same? Yet one road is less worn by footsteps, so they don't look the same? The roads look the same but look different? It’s like that famous expression about having your cake and eating it, too.

This is where we find complexity in the poem. You could argue that the poem is weak due to a contradiction, but I prefer to find "complexity" here. Looking back at life and at our decisions can fill us with very mixed feelings.

The grassy road is more inviting to a person wanting an adventure, wanting to avoid the predictable or conventional. If you prefer to follow the crowd, you pick the road that is worn down.

Anyway, this Frost poem says you can’t go back in time. We pick roads in life when we make major decisions. After you go down one road in life like picking a school or career or spouse, it is not easy to go back to the starting point to pick some other road.

In 8th grade a student picks a “road” in life when picking a high school. That road may take you to an English teacher who inspires you to major in English in college, which leads to your brilliant novel that wins you the Nobel Prize in Literature, but at another school a science teacher would have inspired you to major in science, leading to a cure for cancer and the common cold.

Picking a breakfast cereal in the morning is probably not the same as picking a road.