The Road Not Taken
The Road Not Taken - context Summary
Composed 1915–1916
Robert Frost wrote "The Road Not Taken" around 1915 and published it in 1916 in Mountain Interval. Ostensibly about a traveler choosing between two paths, the poem is a wry reflection on choice, regret, and the stories we invent about our past decisions. Frost composed it as a playful jab at his friend Edward Thomas, whose indecision on walks inspired the poem’s theme. Its narrative voice looks back from the future, turning a simple fork in the road into a meditation on how people reinterpret ordinary moments as defining.
Read Complete AnalysesTwo 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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