The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken
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.


I'm reading an entire book about this poem, a book by Gregory Orr.  But the most illuminating insights into the poem have come from the writers in my writing group.

A poem leaves itself open to a myriad of interpretations and insights.  This one is eminently memorizable--what with its rhythm and rhyme patterns.  In the end, as I see it, the speaker is saying that even though the two roads were essentially the same, he's going to tell his story when he's old just the way he wants to tell it--that one was "less traveled by."

In other words, "That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

I heard a good companion talk on Ted, though Ruth Chang didn't actually mention the poem: https://www.ted.com/talks/ruth_chang_how_to_make_hard_choices?language=en