Tag Archives: Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

As the new year approaches and the roads of our past and future spread out before us, I thought we should go back to Frost for the last poem of the year.

Special treat! Click on the audio for a recording of Frost reciting his poem and think about “why,” as my good friend Susan Dentzer would ask, “did Frost call the poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ as opposed to ‘The Road Less Traveled?”

Happy New Year!

01 The Road not Taken

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry that 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

Yet 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 onto way,
I doubted that 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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Tuesday Poetry Post

It’s snowing in New England and this close to Christmas everyone is pressed for time getting everything ready for the holiday.  It made me think of this poem by Robert Frost and my good friend Pete Volanakis.

It’s short.  You have time.

ef2c344d6fb6b5825c84f5e756f019dcStopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

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