The Road Not Taken

Most of us are familiar with the poet Robert Frost
(the “promises to keep” and “miles to go before I sleep” guy)
I suddenly remembered the following poem I had learned in
school. Quite an impact it had, at the time…and became one
of my favorites. I thought I’d share it:

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.   

Robert Frost on his own poetry:
“One stanza of ‘The Road Not Taken’ was written while
I was sitting on a sofa in the middle of England: Was
found three or four years later, and I couldn’t bear not
to finish it. I wasn’t thinking about myself there, but
about a friend who had gone off to war, a person who,
whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the
other. He was hard on himself that way.”

Each one of us can interpret this poem in our own way – especially
those of us who regret not taking the road we want to – because of
life circumstances… think back on all that you wanted to do…but
couldn’t…the worry of indecision….regrets…