The language is simple and accessible, though the ideas are more complex than they seem. The Road not taken is a poem written in 1916 by Robert Frost and was the first poem of the collection Mountain interval. The voice is that of the poet or narrator, using the first person ‘I’. The rhythm is varied there is no clear metrical pattern, but strong use of enjambment creates a ‘conversational’ flow that is intimate and seems informal, as if the poet is ‘talking’ to the reader.
After choosing one of the roads, the narrator tells himself that he will come back to. He considers both paths and concludes that each one is equally well-traveled and appealing. The narrator comes upon a fork in the road while walking through a yellow wood. The poem comprises four stanzas of five lines each, known as quintains. Robert Frost: Poems Summary and Analysis of 'The Road Not Taken' (1916) Buy Study Guide. Yet it became popular … taken to be an inspiring poem, which sounds noble and is really mischievous ( Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered, 1984) Frost did on occasion warn his … audiences that it was a tricky poem. characterized himself in that poem particularly as ‘fooling my way along.’ He also said that it was really about his friend (English poet) Edward Thomas, who when they walked together always castigated himself for not having taken another path than the one they took. The last line of the poem is, of course, ambiguous. There is no right answer and we will always wonder subsequently if there was a better route. Taught in high school classrooms across the English-speaking world, it’s become popular as a depiction of rugged individuality, of “straying from the beaten path.”īut is it that simple? Careful reading will show Frost’s intention to convey that whatever path, whatever decision in life, is taken by the listener or reader, it will leave them wondering if the alternative would have been better. One of the most widely quoted poems ever written, “The Road Not Taken” was completed in 1915 and first published in Frost’s volume Mountain Interval (1916).