The Road Not Taken
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
ROBERT FROST
BACKGROUND
Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an America poet. He is considered as one of the most valuable English poets. He grew up in New England and therefore he is known for his stylish, rural and simple description. The Road Not Taken is a narrative poem. Narrative poetry is a genre in which there is a narrator who tells the plot of the poem.
The poem was written in 1915 and was published in 1916 in the collection Mountain Interval by Frost himself.
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.
LITERARY TERMS * Setting – information usually given in the beginning of the piece in which we are told where the literary text unfolds and when the events take place. The settings in The Road Not Taken are mentioned in the first stanza- yellow wood, in front of a diverged road. * Stanza - a group of lines that forms a unit in a poem.
The Road Not Taken is structured in four stanzas. * Paradox – a statement that seems contradictory but is not really. In the third stanza the narrator says: " oh I kept the first for another!... I doubted if I should ever come back." The narrator thinks he is going to come back and take the other road. In the next line the narrator thinks that he might not be able to come back. *
ROBERT FROST
BACKGROUND
Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an America poet. He is considered as one of the most valuable English poets. He grew up in New England and therefore he is known for his stylish, rural and simple description. The Road Not Taken is a narrative poem. Narrative poetry is a genre in which there is a narrator who tells the plot of the poem.
The poem was written in 1915 and was published in 1916 in the collection Mountain Interval by Frost himself.
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.
LITERARY TERMS * Setting – information usually given in the beginning of the piece in which we are told where the literary text unfolds and when the events take place. The settings in The Road Not Taken are mentioned in the first stanza- yellow wood, in front of a diverged road. * Stanza - a group of lines that forms a unit in a poem.
The Road Not Taken is structured in four stanzas. * Paradox – a statement that seems contradictory but is not really. In the third stanza the narrator says: " oh I kept the first for another!... I doubted if I should ever come back." The narrator thinks he is going to come back and take the other road. In the next line the narrator thinks that he might not be able to come back. *