THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Robert Frost is regarded as the greatest American poet of the 20th century. He was close friends with British poet Edward Thomas and the two took many walks together. In Frost’s words, Thomas was “a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other“. The Road Not Taken was initially meant to be a gentle mocking of indecision and Frost sent an advanced copy of the poem to Thomas. In the poem, the speaker stands in the woods pondering which of the two roads ahead should he take. Though Frost probably wrote the poem to highlight the human tendency to look back and blame minor decisions in their life, it has since been interpreted by readers as a poem on the benefit of free thinking and not following the crowd. The last lines of the poem are hugely popular and often quoted. The Road Not Taken is not only the most famous poem of Robert Frost but perhaps the most renowned English poem.

Excerpt:-

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.