The Road Not Taken

If you'd like to read something a little lighter than international relations this summer, here's a famous poem by Robert Frost. He was an American poet who lived most of his life in the northeastern part of the country until he died in 1963.

The poem is about a time when he came to an intersection and had to decide which road to take. He decides to take the one that most people did not use and he thinks that will make a big difference in his future. The last 3 lines of the poem are the most well-known part.

"The Road Not Taken"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood(1),
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(2);

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear(3);
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(4).
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.

(1) wood = forest
(2) undergrowth = the small bushes and plants that grown under the tall trees.
(3) wanted wear = he thought that path needed/wanted someone to go down it because the grass growing on the path showed that few people had been using it.
(4) these 2 lines, and the 2 before them, mean that both paths seemed to be about the same. They lay covered with leaves and no one had walked on them to make the leaves turn color. trodden = walked on.

English poetry is most often based on timing or rhythm and similar-sounding words (rhyme). If you read this aloud you'll notice an ABAAB rhyming pattern in the last word the lines. The last word of the 1st, 3rd and 4th lines rhyme (A) and the last word of  the 2nd and 5th lines rhyme (B).