The Road Not Taken

Into the Woods
Originally uploaded by Taking5

"The Ode Less Travelled" is, of course, an allusion to this famous poem by Robert Frost. Given my current interests in poetry, I looked up the poem:

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.

Obviously, I am far more familiar with the end of the poem than any other part of it. And of course, the impression one gets from the last two lines is that the writer has been rewarded by striking out on his own, rather than by following the crowd. So it was quite revealing to re-read the whole and realise that (as this analysis states) that it is not evident that the second road was really less travelled and secondly, that the writer may not have benefited from his choice! Indeed, it would seem that the poem is about the "might-have-beens" which arise from the different choices which we make in life rather than an ode to individualism.