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.
In Robert Frost’s, “The Road Not Taken”, there is a hint of romanticism in this poem in sighing over what might have been. I get a mental image of a man, standing at a fork in a path, contemplating which path to travel. Finally this man decides to walk down the path that is slightly more grassy, meaning possibly less walked down. He walks down this path with the hopes of seeing magnificent things, things the other more traveled path would not have. Later, when he tells his story with a sigh, we get the impression that at first he regretted his choice to walk down the road less traveled, because maybe the sights were not as magnificent as he originally imagined. However, quickly after, we get a sense that he changes his mind, and is ridding his mind of regrets and embracing his choice to take the road not taken.
