Popo -- Pauline Lee

Popo has chosen one of the most famous and celebrated poems in English literature as her favorite: Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken".

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost 

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 lived from 1874 until 1963 and first published "The Road Not Taken" in 1916. Before 1916, Frost had met and befriended the writer Edward Thomas. They frequently walked together, and Frost wrote this poem as a sort of friendly taunt, referring to Thomas's indecision on their walks. However, Thomas took this poem more seriously than Frost had intended (as do many modern readers), and ended up enlisting to serve in World War I.