TITHONUS' DIARY!!
New - Archives - Profile - Notes - Email - Design - Diaryland |
|
klik I wrote this stuff originally for another reason, but saw the poem in cista's diary and thought maybe I'd post it here too. - Robert Frost�s poem �The Road Not Taken� is often quoted just as the last three lines: �Two roads diverged in a wood and I � I took the one less traveled by And that has made all the difference� They ring very nicely but the trouble is that, read alone, they lose what makes the poem interesting. It becomes a boast � �I�m different! I did it my way!� But look, here�s something interesting from the first stanza: �Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood� �I could not travel both and be one traveler�! Isn�t this suggestive of the possibility that, if one were to let go of the need to be �one�, that it would be unnecessary to choose between paths? And in the last stanza, if we give it in full, then the whole character of those lines is totally changed: �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� So he is making a prediction about his future recollection of the event � and in an ironic voice, too. Because in the second stanza: �Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,� About the same! The road less traveled by is actually the road �very slightly less traveled, if there�s any difference, which in fact, there might not be.� So it�s this� tension that he�s writing about, really, this sense of having to make a choice and not knowing how to make it, and being filled with fearful thoughts of his future realisation that this decision actually �made all the difference�. - "I'm going down to the murky water Because it is my home" - Oh Susanna |
Previous / Next |