I seem to post a lot of Robert Frost, but that’s not a bad thing. I try to live by the last lines of this poem.
Interestingly, the last lines were also used on the opening pages of Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me.
“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
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.
That’s a good one, my second favourite Frost poem after Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. It’s interesting how the speaker takes a road equal in every way to the other road but proclaims it less traveled, despite being the more recently traveled upon road since he just traveled on it. I also like that the Road not taken is isn’t the focus of the poem despite being the title.