Summary: The Road Not Taken
A traveller walking through a wood in autumn comes to a place where the path splits into two. He feels sorry that he cannot walk on both, so he stands for a long time and looks down one path as far as it is visible, until it turns into the bushes.
Then he takes the other path. It seems just as good, and perhaps a little better, because it is grassy and looks as if fewer people have used it. Yet he admits that, in truth, both had been used about equally.
That morning both paths were covered with fresh fallen leaves that nobody had stepped on. He tells himself he will come back for the first path some other day, but he knows that one path leads to another, so he will probably never return.
He imagines himself, many years later, telling this story with a sigh. He will say he took the path that fewer people had travelled, and that this choice made all the difference to his life.
The two roads stand for the choices we face in life. Once we choose, we rarely get to go back, and each choice changes where we end up.
Key points to remember
- Poet: Robert Frost (name printed below the poem), a famous American poet
- Theme: choices and decision-making in life
- The poem has 4 stanzas of 5 lines each
- Rhyme scheme of every stanza: abaab — the same pattern throughout
- 'Two roads diverged' — symbol of a choice between two options
- 'Yellow wood' — an autumn wood; it suggests a mature stage of life when serious decisions are made
- 'Grassy and wanted wear' — the road looked less used and tempting to try
- Keeping 'the first for another day' — he hoped to try the other option later
- 'Way leads on to way' — one choice leads to the next, so we seldom come back
- 'The one less travelled by' — a rare, unusual, independent choice
- 'With a sigh' can mean satisfaction or regret — the poet leaves it open
