Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco.  He became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years, enrolled at Dartmouth College in Vermont in 1892, and later at Harvard University in Boston, though he never earned a formal college degree. In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, whom he’d shared valedictorian honors with in high school and who was a major inspiration for his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after they tried and failed at farming in New Hampshire.  By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections, A Boy’s Will (Henry Holt and Company, 1913) and North of Boston (Henry Holt and Company, 1914), and his reputation was established. By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased.  Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963. (Source)

In “The Road Not Taken” life is explored as a pathway of continuous choices.  Each choice, or chosen fork in the path, determines our life’s trajectory.  Frost himself indicated that this poem was not meant to “second guess” his life, but to rejoice in the fact that by choosing paths that are often less popular, he had been able to enjoy a full, unique, and creative life.  The poem empathizes with the difficulty each of us faces in making life’s choices.

Robert Frost was born 26 March, 1874 in San Francisco. Frost was awarded four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, and is remembered for examining complex themes such as the decisions in life, which is best exemplified in ‘The Road Not Taken’.

The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost

(Listen to the poem here)

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 marked 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