Robert Frost is a great American poet from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  He is one of my favorite poets and today I’d like to share with you one of his more famous poems. This poem is entitled, The Road Not Taken, and it is one of his most beloved poems.

In this poem the speaker is standing in the forest at a fork in the road*.  As the speaker looks at the two roads in front of him he observes** they are similar in many ways.  The speaker tells himself even though each road is equal, he can only go down one, because he is only one person.  So, the man must choose which road to go down.  In the end he chooses the road that he thinks is less traveled by other people.  Now that is a very dry overview of this poem; the poem itself is much more elegant.

Like many of Robert Frost’s poems, The Road Not Taken, is likely a depiction*** of rural life in New England in the early 20th century.  Robert Frost was born in 1874 in California, but he attended college in New England and he wrote about New England frequently in his poems.  Robert Frost was a popular American poet both during his own lifetime and today.  He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and his poems are often taught in schools in the United States.

As a traveler myself, I am particularly drawn to this poem.  I will always remember the first time I read it during one of my high school English classes.  I have come back to read this poem many times over the years.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do and perhaps you will find yourself coming back to read it again and again.

Here is some vocabulary from the poem that may be helpful to know before you start reading:

diverge – to separate from one another
undergrowth – vegetation in a forest, which obstructs passage through the forest
to claim – to assert and demand the recognition of something
trodden (past participle of ‘to tread’) – to have been walked on (to tread = to step or walk on)
sigh – to let out a long, deep, audible breath, often expressing sorrow, fatigue, longing,

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.

Here is an audio version of this poem with accompanying pictures to help illustrate the ideas in the poem.  You might want to listen to this audio version of the poem to check your listening comprehension.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v4M73_WKl4&feature=related

* a fork in the road = a place where one road separates into two roads that then go off in different directions
** to observe = to notice or to pay attention to
*** a depiction = a visual presentation