Search results
- The Road Not Taken. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. “The Road Not Taken” is by far the best known of Frost’s poems, so much so that it’s become a cliché.
- Mending Wall. He will not go beyond his father’s saying, And he likes having thought of it so well. He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.” ADVERTISEMENT.
- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here. To watch his woods fill up with snow.
- Birches. When I see birches bend to left and right. Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy’s been swinging them. “Birches” takes a look at how birch tree branches get bent in a blank-verse meditation on the fun of swinging from trees, and how they get bent in a storm.
To celebrate his first publication, Frost had a book of six poems privately printed; two copies of Twilight were made—one for himself and one for his fiancee. Over the next eight years, however, he succeeded in having only 13 more poems published.
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;
- Plot summary
- Details
- Example
- Trivia
- Significance
- Quotes
- Cultural references
- Critical reception
- Themes
- Story
- Style
- Title
- Analysis
The Road Not Taken begins with a dilemma, as many fairytales do. Out walking, the speaker comes to a fork in the road and has to decide which path to follow:
In his description of the trees, Frost uses one detailthe yellow leavesand makes it emblematic of the entire forest. Defining the wood with one feature prefigures one of the essential ideas of the poem: the insistence that a single decision can transform a life. The yellow leaves suggest that the poem is set in autumn, perhaps in a section of woods...
The speaker briefly imagines staving off choice, wishing he could travel both / And be one traveler. (A fastidious editor might flag the repetition of travel/traveler here, but it underscores the fantasy of unitytraveling two paths at once without dividing or changing the self.) The syntax of the first stanza also mirrors this desire for simultanei...
After peering down one road as far as he can see, the speaker chooses to take the other one, which he describes as
Frost then reiterates that the two roads are comparable, observingthis timethat the roads are equally untraveled, carpeted in newly fallen yellow leaves:
As the tone becomes increasingly dramatic, it also turns playful and whimsical. Oh, I kept the first for another day! sounds like something sighed in a parlor drama, comic partly because it is more dramatic than the occasion merits: after all, the choice at hand is not terribly important. Whichever road he chooses, the speaker, will, presumably, en...
The Road Not Taken appears as a preface to Frosts Mountain Interval, which was published in 1916 when Europe was engulfed in World War I; the United States would enter the war a year later. Thomass Roads evokes the legions of men who will return to the roads they left only as imagined ghosts:
Frost was disappointed that the joke fell flat and wrote back, insisting that the sigh at the end of the poem was a mock sigh, hypo-critical for the fun of the thing. The joke rankled; Thomas was hurt by this characterization of what he saw as a personal weaknesshis indecisiveness, which partly sprang from his paralyzing depression. Thomas prescien...
The last stanzastripped of the poems earlier insistence that the roads are really about the samehas been hailed as a clarion call to venture off the beaten path and blaze a new trail. Frosts lines have often been read as a celebration of individualism, an illustration of Emersons claim that Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. In the film...
Again, the language is stylized, archaic, and reminiscent of fairytales. Frost claims he will be telling the story somewhere ages and ages hence, a reversal of the fairytale beginning, Long, long ago in a faraway land. Through its progression, the poem suggests that our power to shape events comes not from choices made in the material worldin an au...
The fairytale-like language also accentuates the way the poem slowly launches into a conjuring trick. Frost liked to warn listeners (and readers) that you have to be careful of that one; its a tricky poemvery tricky. Part of its trick is that it enacts what it has previously claimed is impossible: the traveling of two roads at once.
And, indeed, the title of the poem hovers over it like a ghost: The Road Not Taken. According to the title, this poem is about absence. It is about what the poem never mentions: the choice the speaker did not make, which still haunts him. Again, however, Frost refuses to allow the title to have a single meaning: The Road Not Taken also evokes the r...
The poem moves from a fantasy of staving off choice to a statement of division. The reader cannot discern whether the difference evoked in the last line is glorious or disappointingor neither. What is clear is that the act of choosing creates division and thwarts dreams of simultaneity. All the difference that has arisenthe loss of unityhas come fr...
The release of his previous collection, North of Boston, in 1915 had secured Frost's status as an important voice in modern American poetry. "The Road Not Taken" is the opening poem in Mountain Interval, which may partially explain the poem's tremendous popularity and stature.
The Road Not Taken. Load audio player. Robert Frost. 1874 –. 1963. 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.
People also ask
Why did Robert Frost write the road not taken?
Why is Robert Frost a good poet?
What does Frost say in a letter to Thomas?
Is frost a tricky poem?
How many poems did Robert Frost write?
Which Frost poem reads like a journal entry?
Written in 1915 in England, "The Road Not Taken" is one of Robert Frost's—and the world's—most well-known poems. Although commonly interpreted as a celebration of rugged individualism, the poem actually contains multiple different meanings.
8.0/10 (4612 reviews)
audiobooks.com has been visited by 10K+ users in the past month
Get 3 Audiobooks Free with a 30 day free trial. Start your free trial now - sign up free. 500,000+ Audiobooks, Unlimited audio news, sleep & relaxation, audio magazines and more.
the most flexible & value-focused audiobook services - no1reviews.com
Amazon offers products from hundreds of top brands at great prices. Shop low prices on holiday essentials. Free shipping, exclusive discounts, and more.
