Sunday, January 21, 2007

Poem of the Week: 'The Road Not Taken'


Featured in the Robin Williams film, Dead Poets Society, this poem by Robert Frost carries a powerful message about life. What sort of person do you want to be? Someone who follows everyone else, only treading safely where others have trodden before? Or someone with the courage and strength to be yourself and take a different direction to those around you? Give in to peer pressure and society, or ignore it all and have a unique, fresh and original life?
'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.

No comments: