The Road Not Taken

Knight's Castle had a post today wishing Robert Frost a happy 134th birthday and thinking about Frost's poem The Road Not Taken in terms of his own career in the Foreign Service. I remember studying this poem in Mrs. Wigg's 6th grade English class and really liking it, but I admit to not having given it much thought since. But Knight is right: it is very fitting for those of us who have chosen this crazy, wonderful life.

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.