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.
The Road Not Taken was written in 1915 and published in Robert Frost’s collection Mountain Interval in 1916. It was inspired by Frost’s walks with fellow poet Edward Thomas in the English countryside—walks that often ended in light-hearted regret over which path they chose.
It is one of the most widely quoted and misinterpreted poems in modern literature. The poem explores the idea of choices and their impact on life’s journey. The poem’s narrator stands at a fork in the woods, reflecting on the uncertainty of decision-making and the roads not travelled. Its famous closing lines — “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference” — continue to spark debate over whether the poem celebrates individualism or questions it.
The poem is a lyric narrative composed of four quintains (five-line stanzas), written in iambic tetrameter with a regular ABAAB rhyme scheme.
