"The Road not Taken" by Robert Frost (poetry reading)

[chona42]

I think "The Road Less Traveled" would be a more suitable title for this poem. :)

[MissRyleeDrew]

Sixth grader memorizing it right here for 50%of my grade :( oh well

[papaclanc]

I think he tells it "with a sigh" because it rhymes with "I" and "by."

Duh.



[fashion30mb]

I don't think that he's talking about the sigh as an expression of regret for a life wasted, but as a nostalgic look at his youth remembering his choices and wondering how things would have turned out if he had made a different choice which has nothing to do with a feeling of regret of the choice that he made.

[SofieIsRainbows]

i have to memorize this for an audition. bleh.

[SpokenVerse]

@SofieIsRainbows I hope it leads to a great career, all the best, Tom

[Makjonesy]

I have to memorize this poem by Halloween for school! It was either this, how do I love thee, 2 shake spree ones, or funeral blues! This was my fav. I only have a little memorized!

2 roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not b on traveler long I stood? Idk if that's right :) lol

I'm in 7th grade :D

[ebbandjaro]

@Makjonesy haha i have to memorize it too, im in 8th grade

[curlyheadedbecca]

@ebbandjaro im in 8th grade toooo!!!! and have to memorize it :/

[elenamazin]

@ebbandjaro lol im memorizing it too, im in 9th grade

[MrsMoonshine8]

Oh, I also wonder why Frost opted for a 'yellow wood' (the colour). Does anybody know? Maybe mainly because of the association with the sun at its earliest stages in the day. Not quite the dawn of life, not quite the middle of it. Suggestions?

[iLurvePugs]

@MrsMoonshine8 Autumn leaves

[MrsMoonshine8]

Yep, of course (upon reading some comments on here). The last verse could mostly be meant sarcastically. It really makes no difference at all whichever road you take. Relativity of viewpoint. What's more valuable about 'a road less traveled' as compared to 'the common road'? Exactly: nothing. (Btw, great reading once again: I'm quite puzzled by the fairly large part of dissatisfied voters.)

[vividDC]

If you are a truth seeker, search "Truth Contest" in Google and click on the 1st result, then open The Present and read what it says. Everyone needs to see this. The Present will turn this world right-side up if it reaches enough people. You will see what I mean when you read the first page.

[Bacolod57]

Road to remember there i came from:-(

[burtingtune]

Surely the ultimate irony is when people like myself read the last stanza. Most of us, if we are honest, are unexceptional and lead ordinary lives. This is not a bad thing, but whenever I read the last stanza - and I, I took the one lest travelled by and that has made all the difference - I am reminded that I haven't taken any roads lest travelled by and am leading a fairly orthodox life. In short, the 'I' isn't me. By the way, I enjoy reading all the other comments by other contributors.

[aastha678]

this story is about the dilemma the the poet faced

[donnie4314]

Thats a good poem

[BlackGoldRedMetal]

At the year of eight, when the world was new

For school I spoke this poem I knew

At that year plus ten, I swore I knew

What the world would give (so little few)

[xXTheSmittyXx]

This is how I'm memorizing my poem that I need to read aloud to the class tomorrow.

[reybuono1]

The poem is not about choice. It's about how we remember choice -- how we ascribe importance to past events that were not all that significant at the time. It's also a satire. The voice that shall be "telling this with a sigh" is pretentious and a bit sententious. Frost is ironically looking ahead to his future when he will be describing this this choice as if he knew what it meant. The key is the dash before the two "I"s in the third stanza. The poem has been abused by so many English teachers.

[TheVALLEYoftheDEAD]

@reybuono1 I completely 'disagree' with you. This is 1st time i have ever heard or read this this Poem & this is what I believe he is saying: He is looking back over the life he has lead. At one point he reached a fork in the road. Both roads lay open but the one that caught his was less traveled, described as he put it, "having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy & wanted wear.' This also tell's me that he is not to certain 'why' he chose that path, but in the end, he did. (cont)

[TheVALLEYoftheDEAD]

@reybuono1 (cont) He goes on to say, "though at the passing there had worn them really about the same." How I see it, is at the 'meeting point' of these 2 paths of passing, it was 'equally worn' & well traveled, however that was not the case with both paths. Until this point, no step had 'trodden black.' 'Possibly meaning, 'No step had serious consequence until that point.' He later mentions, this point is a point of no return, hence, ''i doubted if I should ever return.'' (cont)

[TheVALLEYoftheDEAD]

@reybuono1 (cont) The crux of all of this is that, in the beginning, this did not seem like a major 'fork in the road' or a 'major decision' & both paths seemed 'equal' at that point in time. However, when he looks back he realizes that what may have (at the time) 'seemed' like a simple decision having not much consequence, ended up been the difference between, 'a life worth living & no life at all.' (excuse the grammar & spelling;)

[mistermental132]

@reybuono1 Totally agree. It's the ironic graduation-speaker poem.

[allthingspinkable]

Love this poem

[trendboy1]

Amazing voice you have. Had made me love the poem all the more

[mucookre]

though i have read the poem and love it from the time i was a teenager,it took years to go by and me reaching the other side of thirties to understand it truly.maynot be in the way the poet wanted but standing at the juncture of life with a sigh of regret over the road of love i chose to travel instead of waiting for the right moment to hold the right man's hand chose by my parents.as truly said,roads leads to others and that is it u never get to the starting point again. decisions are it about.

[jinx2176]

i think he tells it with a sigh because years from now he will look back and be wondering what the other road had been like and where it might have led because life has a tendency to go forward never back he would not meet that first road in the future and would never realy know thats why even though the less travled road was not a wrong choice it was a tricky one as he will never know if it was the better choice because in life there are no "do overs" but he is not sorry for the coice he made

[JEANNEMULLER]

I love this narrator's voice! Who, Who are you? Amazing Blazing inflection and audio direction~ As a poet I wish I not only knew it but could utter with such audacity and authority with voice' golden!

[noahhussain]

Can you imagine him, at 60, telling friends, “Hey, remember that time when everyone was doing Y and I did Y, too”? No: it doesn't make for a great story. What has made all the difference to the speaker is the making of the choice, not how the choice unfolds (though he hasn't even begun traveling the road, he states, right now, that choosing it is the important thing to him; it's irrelevant if he dies walking it, or wins the lottery walking it.) And his sigh would be a sigh of relief, not regret.

[cupofsugarful]

instead, I interpret his use of the word "difference" as the meaning behind why he chose the road in the first place, because it was different in his eyes at first glance, and for that reason more appealing.

[cupofsugarful]

"Though as for that, the passing there, had worn them really about the same"

"I kept the first for another day, yet knowing how way leads onto way, I doubted if I should ever come back"

These few lines are a focal point in the poem, these two diverging roads aren't so different that the speaker can make an easy choice, and with his decision, a faint regret follows. The speaker then uses the word "difference" in a playful manner, really there was no difference at all, as was just stated.

[papashez]

@cupofsugarful I agree with you entirely here. It seems that this poem is rarely truly understood! It is a poem about a kind of active procrastination! It is, as Frost himself admitted later, about a man who always regretted whatever decision he ever made believing the untrodden grass on the other path was always going to be greener. In the film "The Dead Poets' Society" Robin Williams completely misunderstands the poem and consequently so did many who read the poem in the film's wake...

[MrSupaBored]

frost is a genius by writing a poem that has so many varied meanings depending on who you are and what you have experienced, he could have simply explained the meaning to every verse but that would defeat the sense of personal meaning ♥ his writing skills

[Isforrealthistime18]

robert frost is an amazing poet

[acechadwick]

@Liangry

I presume the line means that when looks back on one's life (ages and ages hence meaning many years in the future) one would wonder what would have happened had one taken the other road (alternative).

We all have roads that diverge. Isn't it a wonderful thought? Our lives are just pure momentary choices with millions of possibilities and permutations.

[langstonify]

"I shall be telling this" is a key to the poem; the speaker has decided what he will say when he's old, including "that has made all the difference," which he can't know yet. Wonderfully ambiguous. Unfortunately, the poem is often still taught as one simply advocating taking a less-traveled road.

[zipzapper0]

All great art creates emotion of some kind or another this is just as much art as a video game.

[Ennio444]

I always thought this poem was not about making the right choice, but about making choices.

How, on every choice we make, we leave paths behind, we create new futures on the foundation of what we think to be the greener way, while we might be leaving behind the path that led ultimately to a better end.

That's the meaning of the sigh. We might be happy of the road he took, but we always wonder what would have it been had we had taken another road.

[kellytippett]

It is tricky the more i think about it. He thought he was being original and different by going up a road less traveled, but in the end its just a road like the other. Only his was maybe harder to travel.

[beaulieu4008]

For me contradictions are a literally gem as they are in life. For you can be both happy and sad simultaneously. You are happy because you are the best at what you do, but sad because you are alone. And sometimes a sigh is just a sigh. Happy that he chose the right road, but sad because it is the end of the road for him as he's looking back.

[imagine9384]

I love Robert Frost's work.You have a wonderful voice which really brings the reality of the words.

Thank you for sharing this.

[ThunderingJove]

The sigh comes from the linear nature of time, to be but one traveler, when we would be many.

[donpearson61]

I enjoy browsing your poems. This is another that your reading has brought to life for me.

Were the sigh mine, it would be for the necessity of choice rather than the results of it. It would express a simple desire to have seen what was around that bend.

[SpokenVerse]

Frost was aware that the poem was ambiguous and provoked much speculative analysis. He could have explained his meaning but he didn't - and he seemed slyly amused that so much could be squeezed from a damp sponge.

[falsepity]

@SpokenVerse If Frost did that, then *he* proved himself to be a wise man yet again