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.
I mentioned this poem briefly in a post about life choices last year, and something recently recalled it to my mind again.
Why is the wood yellow? Is it a mature wood, it is autumn there, and if so, why? I really don’t know. Both paths seem equally appealing to our curious walker who looks as far as he can see down the first. But there is a corner, beyond which the path and future are unseen. I’ve often found myself on a path in a wood, knowing that at some time I will need to turn around and return the same way; looking ahead I’ve thought, ‘well, I’ll just walk as far as that turning’ and then come back. In life, that’s not an option anyone has…
The speaker takes the other path on the grounds that it looks brighter and less-used, whilst admitting that there’s really not all that much in it. There is a jauntiness, a casualness in the decision – he’ll come back another day and follow the other track, again whilst admitting to himself there’s not really much chance of that happening.
Is there a sigh of regret in the final stanza? After so much time has passed he will remember that moment of choice, a brief hesitation marked by the repetition of ‘I’ at the end and beginning of lines. And it made all the difference: what difference is he actually talking about? He doesn’t, can’t know…
It is a deceptively simple poem, because the tone – casual, offhand even – mirrors the way we take a lot of the decisions we make in our lives: this or that course, this or that job, journey and so on. And we have to: to agonise too much is to paralyse ourselves and in the end we have to leap and act. Only as we grow older, perhaps, like the speaker or the poet, do we pause, look back and reflect on the significance of choices which actually did shape of change our lives. Is that what he means by ‘all the difference’? For the choices we make shape the person we become, and if we are content, then we approve and validate the choices we made, as the poet does.
The language is simple – no difficult words in the poem – the sentences quite long and involved, nevertheless, for the poet wants to create a thoughtful and reflective mood, and such sentences mirror the slow thought-processes as he recalls and evaluates his choices and how they shaped his existence. The first sentence is twelve lines! Then a single exclamatory line, another short sentence and then the final sentence is the last stanza, summing up his complex train of thought.
For me, it is a wonderful poem, one that I suspect will last a long time in anthologies and possibly become the poem Frost is ultimately remembered for, for its deceptively easy profundity and lasting effect, and the way it surely speaks to most of us and our condition. Existential, perhaps, but without the angst…