The Road Not Taken

 

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.

Robert Frost

_________________

 

There he was, in his cabin, removed from the world, not to renounce it, but to see it better.

from On Poets and Others 

by Octavio Paz 

on the occasion of his meeting 

with the poet Robert Frost