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Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 –

January 29, 1963) was an American poet.
His work was initially published in England
before it was published in America. Known
for his realistic depictions of rural life,
Frost frequently wrote about settings from
rural life in New England in the NE part of
the USA (where he spent a great part of his
life) in the early twentieth century, using
them to examine complex social and
philosophical themes.

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Robert Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime and is the
only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry:

§1924 for New Hampshire: A Poem With Notes and

Grace Notes
§1931 for Collected Poems
§1937 for A Further Range
§1943 for A Witness Tree

He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an

artistic institution." He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in
1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet
laureate of Vermont.
Frost was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 31 times.

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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,
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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.
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The poem was written by Robert
Frost in 1915. It consists of 4
stanzas having 5 lines each. The
poem has a strong and masculine
rhyme scheme – ABAAB – except
in the last stanza (hence and
difference). The tone of the poem
is pensive (thoughtful) and
reflective. The setting is the rural
areas of New England in America
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This poem is one of the best-
known and most misunderstood
poem of Frost. The poem does
not advise. There is no less
travelled road – the speaker
anticipates his own future
insecurity. The poem combines
rustic simplicity with hidden,
indirect and implied meanings.
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The poem poses a dilemma, one that
we instantly recognize because each of
us encounters it innumerable times,
both literally and figuratively. Paths in
the woods and forks in roads are
ancient and deep-seated metaphors for
life, its crises and decisions. Identical
forks, in particular, symbolize for us
the nexus of free will and fate: We are
free to choose, but we do not really
know beforehand what we are
choosing between.
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The speaker, walking through a forest whose leaves have
turned yellow in autumn, comes to a fork in the road. The
speaker, regretting that he or she is unable to travel by both
roads (since he is, after all, just one person), stands at the
fork in the road for a long time and tries to see where one of
the paths leads. However, the speaker can't see very far
because the forest is dense and the road is not straight.
The speaker takes the other path, judging it to be just as
good a choice as the first, and supposing that it may even be
the better option of the two, since it is grassy and looks less
worn than the other path.
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Though, now that the speaker has actually walked on the
second road, he thinks that in reality the two roads must have
been more or less equally worn-in.
Reinforcing this statement, the speaker recalls that both roads
were covered in leaves, which had not yet been turned black
by foot traffic. The speaker exclaims that he is in fact just
saving the first road, and will travel it at a later date, but then
immediately contradicts him or herself with the
acknowledgement that, in life, one road tends to lead onward
to another, so it's therefore unlikely that he will ever actually
get a chance to return to that first road.

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T h e s p ea k e r i m a g i n es h i m s el f i n t h e d i s t a n t f u t u r e ,
recounting, with a sigh, the story of making the choice of
which road to take. Speaking as though looking back on his
life from the future, the speaker states that he was faced with
a choice between two roads and chose to take the road that
was less traveled, and the consequences of that decision have
made all the difference in his life.

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‘The Road Not Taken’ has got to be among the best-known,
most-often-misunderstood poems on the planet. Of the two
roads the speaker says that they were equally worn and were
not trodden upon that morning. Meaning: Neither of the roads
is less travelled by. The speaker anticipates his own future
insincerity—his need, later on in life, to rearrange the facts.
He knows that he will be inaccurate and hypocritical when he
holds his life up as an example. This realization is ironic and
pathetic. But the “sigh” is critical. The speaker will not, in his
old age, gather the youth about him and say, “Do what I did. I
stuck to my guns, took the road less travelled by, and that
has made all the difference.”
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Rather, he may say this, but he will sigh first; for he won’t
believe it himself. (Somewhere in the back of his mind will
remain the image of yellow woods and two equally leafy
paths.)Also, he will probably regret the road he rejected.
Frost's biographer Lawrance Thompson suggests that the
poem's narrator is "one who habitually wastes energy in
regretting any choice made: belatedly but wistfully he sighs
over the attractive alternative rejected".Thompson also says that
when introducing the poem in readings, Frost would say that
the speaker was based on his friend Edward Thomas, who was
a Welsh poet. In Frost's words, Thomas was "a person who,
whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other".
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The title ‘The Road Not Taken’ is
apt because the road is the
symbol of the choice made by us
in life. Many times, we may
regret our own choice but what is
done cannot be undone. Man
yearns (longs) for what he has
denied himself in life, rather
than what he has chosen.
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The title ‘The Road Not Taken’ depicts the feeling of regret.
The bifurcating road is symbolic of the choices one has to
make in life. It is not possible to make more than one choice,
and to take both the roads. The speaker in the poem considers
all the factors and weighs the pros and cons of both the roads.
In spite of this, after making a choice, the speaker was
plagued with the idea of not making the other choice. He
regrets not opting for the other road, the other choice. Even
when we do well, often after making a choice we keep
thinking of the success which could have been ours if we had
selected the other option.
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The poem deals with the dilemmas
man faces in life. Life throws up
many alternatives. But man can
take up only one of them. The
impact the choice will make on his
life also cannot be foreseen. Hence
our decision is a shot in the dark. If
our choice is wrong, we will have
to face the consequences.
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The message of the poem is that
life is a continuous journey full of
divergence every now and then.
The important thing is to move on
without looking back – whether the
choices were right or wrong. Right
and wrong are relative terms. In life,
we cannot come back to travel the
road not taken earlier.
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The two roads symbolise the
dilemma that man faces in life.
Choices are confusing because one
cannot foretell the result of one’s
choice. The road that bends into the
undergrowth symbolises this
confusion. The grassy road
symbolises the inability to see the
outcome and the road trodden black
symbolises a commonly opted choice.
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The entire poem is an extended metaphor as a person’s life is
indirectly compared to a road and the diversion in the road
are the choices that the person has to make.
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
ANAPHORA – because each line begins with the word ‘and’.
Anaphora is a special type of repetition in which the first
word or first few words of each line or phrase or clause are
repeated.
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ALLITERATION – It is the repetition of a syllable or a
sound more than two times in a line or sentence.

EXCLAMATION – The literary device used in last line of the

above extract is also exclamation as the exclamatory form is
used for emphasis.
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I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
HYPERBOLE – It is a gross exaggeration made for emphasis.
The poet says ‘ages and ages’ which is a very huge period of
time and he wouldn’t even be alive then.
REPETITION – The word ‘ages’ is repeated to emphasize
the fact that the poet would be saying what he wanted after
many years.
VISUAL IMAGERY – This has been used almost
throughout the poem. We can actually visualize the scene
which the poet is describing.
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