Around the time of graduation or other such milestones, one might hear someone quote the final stanza of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” as an anthem of individualism: “I took the [road] less traveled by,/ And that has made all the difference.” Far from speaking these lines with a sigh, as the speaker in the poem does, most people will recite them swelling with sentiment as a rousing call to go against the crowd, strike out into the unknown, and be true to oneself.
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.
But Frost didn’t write the poem thinking its lines would be the perfect adornment for graduation cards. In fact, he wrote the poem as a jest to poke fun at his chronically indecisive friend Edward Thomas, who always had difficulty choosing which path to take when the two went on walks together and would frequently lament that they had not taken the other path.
(Left) Robert Frost, who wrote a poem about his friend Edward Thomas. (Right) Thomas. Public Domain
