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.
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The featured image, uploaded by Tim Green, is a photograph of Calverley Woods taken on 10 June 2023. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
This poem is often misread, as folks pay no heed to the word “sigh.” Frost’s speaker is not celebrating his decision, but simply acknowledging that it made a difference.
Sigh… Those Romantics. It’s a good point
I read Frost’s “Out, out” in high school 55 years ago, and never forgot it.
I started jotting the following down before any comments were posted, haha. It made me think of the poem itself as a path less travelled, without comments. Well, you people ruined it, haha! I’m joking, makes it even funnier to me, just wait for time. I’ll post anyway cause it’s simply for enjoyment, and etc. Thank you Mr. Frost, and The Imaginative Conservative for the reminder.
—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
At first, I stood where many paths lie.
Read them all, I could certainly try,
Or sit there without consequence.
Essays and lectures all perfectly paved,
Like freeways and roads, clear and concise,
Laid for a destination engraved.
The old path, overgrown, I braved,
Cut too through woods of virtue and vice.
Like the path less travelled, no comment?
An unusual thing to behold.
Is this conversation lost, or spent?
Maybe alone, we aimlessly went,
forgotten, overgrown and untold.
If this path meanders aimlessly,
The others were paved with rigid lines.
From the freeway, I can view beauty.
But will I ever learn to love the
Immeasurable, not aimless, designs?
-Jamie Murray
This truly beautiful poem that symbolizes life’s many choices may have been inspired by the friendship of Robert Frost with the English poet Edward Thomas, who unfortunately perished in that debacle of the First World War.