Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

>In yon green-wood there is a waik,
>And in that waik there is a wene,
>And in that wene there is a maike,
>That neither has flesh, blood, nor bane;
>And down in yon green-wood he walks his lane.

This.
I can't even believe how bad my high school teacher misunderstood this poem.

what did they tell you?

nabokov satirized frost pretty well in his pale fire

How do folks read this deep into it?
I'm not saying it's wrong, but how do I get anything past very surface-level metaphors?

Not either of those anons, but probably the same thing my teacher my told me: Frost was saying that choosing the path less traveled has had a major impact on his life.

Pretty much this >Do whats in your heart because it will make all the difference
>just bee yourself

how do i "get" poetry -- yeats, pound, eliot, etc.? when i read it it all feels like a jumble of words and i'm missing something. totally different from reading a novel.

that poem says you directly without any metaphors that the narrator likely cannot return to that crossroad again

>Oh, I kept the first for another day!
>Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
>I doubted if I should ever come back.

you don't need to look for meaning when not only the archetypes are obvious but also it is told directly

Yellow stands for fear. The poem is about standing there like a scared little bitch instead of just making a decision, since none will get you anywhere any quicker.

Fuck it, I'll just be myself then

read actually good poetry, blake, coleridge, kipling, byron, keats etc, lol

>without any metaphors
That is literally (literally) a metaphor. The paths are a metaphor for life decisions.

Pls go tripfag

Yeats, Pound and Eliot are all good poets you fool

>the same thing my teacher my told me: Frost was saying that choosing the path less traveled has had a major impact on his life

and how it's misunderstanding?
it's yet again said directly:

>Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
>I took the one less traveled by,
>And that has made all the difference.

that poem is pretty hard to misunderstand, lol

there is no metaphor in the part which i quoted

you can take it that it repeats the earlier yellow wood metaphor in the direct language

your "paths are a metaphor for life decisions" is irrelevant for what i'm talking about

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,
>both paths are 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,
>both paths are equally worn (neither is actually less travelled)

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
>again both paths are equal
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
>telling with a sigh (i.e. regret)
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
>The dash indicates a pause
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
>this I a lie he is telling himself and others to convince himself his life was not a mistake

>Also notice the name of the poem is "the road not taken", not "the road less traveled".

you dont get it

It means that he got cum stuck on his dick and when he went pee it came out in two streams.

"Don't hate me for being a poet."

>>both paths are equally worn (neither is actually less travelled)

it's pretty clearly said that one of them was "less traveled by", albeit probably not by much less, still a difference apparently was noticeable cos "it was grassy and wanted wear"

>>telling with a sigh (i.e. regret)

possibly, at least he is not especially glad about his choice, it doesn't automatically means regret since the other choice might be worse, but it all is irrelevant since your teacher told you it "has had a major impact on his life" not specifying if it was a positive impact or a negative impact or simply an impact which like most of them is hard to quantify if it's positive or negative. yet again the poem directly says that it was a major impact indeed "that [choosing the less travelled way] has made all the difference"

>Though as for that the passing there
>Had worn them really about the same,

Teachers (mine included) use it as a graduation poem in an attempt to tell kids to follow their dreams and not to follow the beaten path.

The poem is about regret for the "road not taken" because he will never know where it would have lead him.

Pretty much what
said.

The speaker means to convey the idea that we tend to attribute great significance to actually insignificant decisions or choices. How and who we are is not the result of all the little choices we make each day. Furthermore, many people strive to do things differently than those around them, want to blaze a new trail, but, really, whatever it is we decide to do has likely already been done by many people before us.

Also, after making a particular choice, people tend to regret that choice, wondering what great opportunities there may have been on "the road not taken", and this, Frost tells us, is useless and acrually quite pointless.

In what I imagine is "tumblrspeak" today, it's about FOMO.

>i don't care what the poet said, i will enforce my own meaning into his words because i want it so; he said that his choice made all the difference for him? who cares, i think that we tend to attribute great significance to actually insignificant decisions or choices therefore frost clearly meant exactly it

read pale fire, you really remind me the way how botkin read shade's poem

How am I forcing my own meaning on it? The other user broke it down pretty well, but here is my textual evidence to support my claims, anyway:

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,
>that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same
>neither is more worn than the other
>they are both travelled equally

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
>both paths are covered in leaves that no traveller's feet had yet disturbed on this particular morning
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
>As I start on the one path, that will lead to another and another and another, I'll never get to come back and see what lay down the road I do not take this morning

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.
>he says with a sigh, indicating regret or wistfulness
>it has already been established that the path was not really less travelled, so it makes sense to infer that the speaker is also being insincere or tongue-in-cheek about the idea that it has made all the difference

Like I said, FOMO. The speaker will always regret not knowing exactly what was down that other path, but in the end, it doesn't really matter.

As an example from my own life, I am at a crossroads right now where I could continue to work where I am, or move to a neighboring county. There are pros and cons to each of course, but I have to make a decision soon. Whether I choose to stay or go, I will never know what might have been had I made the other choice. I won't end up in the same position years from now, the experiences I have will depend on this choice (along with all the others I will make after this one), but, ultimately, those are not the kind of choices that will impact the person I am, whether I am "successful" as I define it, whether I am happy, etc. I can always wonder "what if?", but that is always an exercise in futility.

Actually what that guy said is what I was taught in school and it's also how I understood the poem.

>And that has made all the difference.
I don't think he implies in this line that his decision is for better or worse. Just that it set him on a course from which he couldn't return. So he is always wondering about the road not taken, and how different things would be had he taken that road. It's an exploration of major life decisions, their finality and the "what ifs" of those decisions. That's how I've always understood it, anyway. I feel like that's fairly obvious when you read it.

Multi-track drifting!!!!

I broke into a grin when I saw this meme. Bravo, sir! Bravo!

yes.

>and that has made all the difference

note that there isn't any value judgement here. No good, no bad. Simply difference.

As the user you were responding to, I also want to ask: how do you determine whether a writer is being ironic or satirical? After reading the responses by the other user I referenced earlier and myself, do you genuinely not see the irony here? Do you think Jonathan Swift actually wanted the peasants to sell their children to the wealthy to be used for food?

Please see and respond to

>Please see and respond to...
I would agree with everything in that post. Basically he's just being wistful about past decisions, knowing it's pointless to look back, yet doing so anyway.

>No good, no bad. Simply difference.
I find it difficult to read this that way. It feels a least a tinge being a difference of good. Maybe not triumphant or preaching, but a nod signaling that this is most likely a good way to comport yourself.

My mistake, I misread your initial post. I understand now.

how'd you do that

How do I become as good as you?

>I don't think he implies in this line that his decision is for better or worse
and? i said the same in >Actually what that guy said is what I was taught in school
it seems your teacher wasn't very good then

nope, i already quoted the key parts, do you want me to repeat them?
>one less traveled by
it's directly said one was less travelled by; yet again, it was directly said in the very text of the poem; if you claim that both ways were travelled the same you bend the text of the poem to your own needs dismissing, downplaying of freely interpreting the key evidence
>it was grassy and wanted wear
the other obviously didn't look like that since only one of them appeared to be "grassy and wanted wear"
>Had worn them really about the same
it seems this is that passage which perplexes you; about the same and the same mean different things, about the same still is not the same, nothing is new under the moon, every road was travelled more than once but still some of them were travelled more and some were travelled less

irony is not hard to recognize, but this poem has no irony, you made two huge stretches / leaps of faith to enforce it into it, first it's that you literally dismiss the direct quote that one way was less travelled and second it's that you claim that if the poet calls a supposedly non less travelled way less travelled it means that he is not serious about the whole thing (hint, if somebody lies to himself he is not ironic)

p.s. you mentioning swift and me supposedly thinking it's not irony it's a strawman argument on your part, you should be ashamed

yeah i do, i read the wikipedia page for it

looks like you didn't read the wikipedia page for the poem

"Autumn years" is a known cliche. You don't need deep thinking you only need knowledge of memes.

frankly i personally missed that metaphor
also i'm still not sure it's indeed the case there that the choice was made by an aged person

i mean, it's pretty clear that every choice cannot be reversed, heraclitus already said that it's possible to enter the same river only once and even those who never heard about heraclitus are familiar with this idea since nowadays it's rooted deeply in our world-view, the poem even goes as far as telling it in the direct text a bit later, it doesn't really need any additional strengthening... i took it as given, the "yon green-wood" in kilmeny is green (supposedly), the wood in this frost's poem is yellow, ok. some woods are green, some are yellow, should we look for symbols in it every time? maybe it reminded me simonov's yellow rains though i.e. a symbol of melancholy. if we dig the idea of yellow as a symbol of sorrow deeper we come to the same autumn though, but autumn in poetry doesn't automatically means the autumn of life...

hm

Do what?

>it's directly said one was less travelled by
I bet you think Humbert didn't do anything wrong too.

Humbert obviously did something wrong, I think the equivalent is something like
> I bet you thought Quilty was real

Or at least the equivalent you'd want.

No, Humbert is an unreliable narrator and in the last stanza so is Frost

Never mind, I see what you mean.

read into the poem like that
how'd you dissect it so well?

I first read it straight through to get a general impression. On a first read you might get the ideas that kitty here has; that the poet took a less traveled path and it made an impact on his life.
Then I read it again, dissecting each line or phrase. I look for evidence that supports or refutes my initial idea. In this case there are a few lines that I pointed out that suggest there wasn't a less traveled road. This could mean that both were not traveled or that both are traveled the same (i.e. the one he thought was less traveled isn't/ people have done that thing before). The wording leans me toward the first explanation.
Then I try to reconcile the last passage with my new insights. Why would he say that he took the path less traveled when he previously said both were traveled the same?
Why did he sigh?
What's the point of the dash pause?
Then read it all again and see if your new analysis makes sense.
Then continue reading and rereading it for the rest of your life and meditate on the meaning.

If the title is different than the first line it could provide cluess as well.

He felt obligated to take the less travelled road if only to keep it working. After he takes it they become much the same

Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

So his act of passing through causes them to become equally worn. Yes it's something that has been done before but if it doesn't continue to happen the way will be lost.

No doubt other readings abound but the ones so far seem to be fitting the poem to a random interpretation.

>So his act of passing through causes them to become equally worn.
So the difference was very slight

Try it out on this poem by Keats now, if you want.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Understanding poetry beyond the prose level requires lateral thinking as well as a grounded understanding of poetic symbolism

>tripfags
>is completely wrong about a basic high school poem

wew. glad i dont trip so im not haunted by my stupidity.

You nigs need to read some Robert Graves if you want to understand this shit better

what does graves have to do with this? i read i claudius but i dont know his other work well/at all

I think he's talking about the system of interpretation laid out in "The White Goddess" and "The Greek Myths"

I think it might be an elaborate troll. I've seen that same trip saying some dumb shit in other threads as well.

unreliable narrator meme
if the poem says something which contradicts my idea of what it is about it's because the narrator is unreliable :^)

clearly in pale fire it's shade was the unreliable narrator, not kinbote, by your logic it is, because you mutilate the poem in a nearly same way

frankly this board is so stupid and pleb that i sometimes am speechless

sheep who cannot even look at the poem themselves and hold what they read on wikipedia and are dumb to any reasoning, i mean, not like they disagree, they outright ignore it if it contradicts what they read on wikipedia

you are not the worst though, that thread how some guy literally lied about what is said in the genesis and the whole flock began to post about it without bothering to check (they apparently never read genesis too) was way worse

You're actually closer to the truth than they are. The poem itself does not necessarily express regret or joy, just a general melancholy about life's limits.

This has been fun, let's do the mending wall next.

>Something there is that doesn't love a wall

What did he mean by this?

>it's pretty clearly said that one of them was "less traveled by", albeit probably not by much less, still a difference apparently was noticeable cos "it was grassy and wanted wear"
If you're completely unable to analyze a simple text like this poem, and come to conclusions so blatantly wrong, why do you even spend your time reading literature? It's wasted on you.

Two titties diverge in the woods
I chose the one less trampled on.

As other anons have already said (and as dumb kitty has somehow still managed not to grasp), the poem is not about how taking the road less traveled by is an important life lesson. The last stanza makes it blatantly obvious:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
>Notice he's saying he "shall be telling this," not that he actually is saying this
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
>So he's already decided what he'll tell people about this choice sometime far in the future, before he even knows how it has actually mattered to his life
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
>The lesson he's going to illustrate with this anecdote is that taking the road less traveled by has made all the difference in his life, even though the paths were about the same and he'll have no way of knowing the truth of the matter, as he's not expecting to ever come back and take the other path.

This is not a hard poem, Frost is in fact one of the easiest poets to understand. If you can't even figure out this one, God help you if you ever pick up something by Dylan Thomas.

Regarding Frost's motives, it's a poem about someone who frets over somewhat meaningless life decisions and, whichever path they take, ends up regretting not taking the other. It was inspired by/written about his English friend, who went on walks with him and displayed this kind of ambivalence in a more amusing way when deciding which fork to go down.

The poem wasn't written or meant to be taken very seriously, which the author has stated, and so it's not great at conveying this consistently. For example, the last lines try to emphasize the speaker's belief that the arbitrary decision he made is responsible for all the changes his life has since undergone, but ends up diminishing this and misdirecting the audience by including the detail about the path he chose being less traveled.

This is speaking more from things Frost has stated about the poem than the poem itself. You can pick out the intended message through analysis, though: the speaker's indecision is characterized when he first looks down and deeply considers one path, then abruptly takes the other. After that he begins to describe why said path was the better choice, but shows doubt regarding even those statements, saying that both paths are essentially the same. The paths in this stanza aren't described as one being more traveled than the other, but as having been traveled equally, or as both being fresh and untraveled. This is likely what Frost was trying to establish in order to depict rather comically someone who, regardless of which road they take, always looks back and asserts that the other would've been better.

Really though, you can take whatever analysis and meaning you want out of the poem. The only "correct" analysis has come from out of text clarifications, which is a pretty big sign that, albeit a good poem, it's not his best work; looking solely at the text, a number of themes can be derived before you arrive at the intended one. From the same book of poetry, I'd recommend "Out, Out--" if you're looking for something of Frost's with a significant and consistent theme.

We can't help but make platitudes out of the arbitrary decisions of our past.

>arbitrary decisions
redundant
>platitudes
not one platitude involved

just keep your mouth shut next time please

>I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

That is a platitude.

Not necessarily. Afterwards the difference is slight, after he takes the other road, but before that the difference is noticeable. Go walking in a wood and you'd see, some paths are very overgrown and you have to cut branches and shit has fallen in the way, some are just overgrown tho. Walking over them tramples all the plant growth down and makes the path anew, it's the walking that forms them in the first place.

IT'S A METAPHOR

>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.

JEE-ZUS CHEEERIST

no it isn't

look both ways before crossing the road is a platitude
follow your heart is a platitude
I took the one less traveled by // and that has made all the difference is NOT a platitude

did you even finish high school?

And where does one learn the symbolism necessary to understand poetry on a deeper level?

Telling someone to "take the road less traveled"--as you might imagine yourself doing as a young man looking to your future, toward grandchildren that might ask you how you came to be as you are and how they might do the same--is a platitude you dumb fuckin fuck.

I'll even give you the wikipedia intro for free:
>A platitude is a trite, meaningless, or prosaic statement, generally directed at quelling social, emotional, or cognitive unease. Platitudes are geared towards presenting a shallow, unifying wisdom over a difficult topic. However, they are too overused and general to be anything more than undirected statements with ultimately little meaningful contribution towards a solution.

Not the user you replied to but there's no need to be so rude lad

Mythology

the whole point of a platitude is to be an easily repeatable phrase which doesn't really mean anything

people just use them when they don't want to think to much about what they have to do. taking the road less traveled doesn't really qualify, honestly

>someone asks you for advice on a momentous decision
>no option seems preferable to any other, but the consequences of any choice preclude the possibilities of all the others
>you don't particularly care about this problem and have little to say on it
>nevertheless you are pressed to offer a suggestion

WHAT DO YOU TELL THIS PERSON

Fuck, it doesn't even have to be 'momentous'--

>What do you think, honey? Should I get the chicken or the tuna salad?
>Take the road less travelled, babe. That's what I always do

Christ.

He was drunk and had to take a piss in the forest but then took the wrong path and ended up wandering around until 6 in the morning. This sucks.

part of the melancholy and sadness in this poem is the insignificance of the decision, actually
if he REALLY cared he could find his way back in after exploring the path. But the decision is permanent simply because it would be a waste of time to return and explore the other path

so he is left thinking about what could have been and makes a decision purely based off a qualification that doesn't really matter. One way wasn't better than the other, but when it came down to it the adventure made it a bit more attractive.

And I still don't agree with your use of the label 'platitude', although I know you're just defending it so you don't have to admit you were wrong. That's ok, just ask to one of your professors (or high school teachers, more likely) and they'll explain it to you

tree st my window
winds w tree

One: Two:

>when it came down to it the adventure made it a bit more attractive.

Back to this. The adventure of what? The road wasn't actually any 'less traveled'.

>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.

Glad to see someone who knows the (authorial) purpose of the work.

You argue for his choice being an important decision and the authorial meaning of the work, the former is a way it could be read but the latter is not correct.

Here's some helpful resources:

poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/44272

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

Take note of that perhaps.

*Perhaps* he's trying to convince himself of his own reasoning, or rather rationalizing his impulse post factum.

I would like to have this discussion but I'm just not well-versed in Frost's poetry or the Movement he was part of

I don't agree with you though, I want to say that Frost was being authentic merely because that was the style of his time. don't really know that for sure though.

The speaker is foreseeing, within the poem, a future moment of "inauthenticity." Why should we expect the speaker to be fully "authentic" with himself?

I read the last stanza as the speaker gently sending himself up exactly for that little slip, that little perhaps--which again, he immediately qualifies and then, in the next stanza, wholly corrects.

I mean okay yeah the whole thing is a metaphor, but he is literally saying there that after he passed through they were worn the same, and that nobody had walked through yet that morning.

The guy is obviously knowledgeable about walking in woods (as perhaps we tend no to be so much these days). It's likely taken for granted that you'd also know some of this shit.

I don't get why other readings are tripping over this tbf (to be frank), it makes no sense that he's walking down both paths and coming back before making his decision, it's creating something not there. I assume this is just a jibe at Thomas' desire for something "rare", the less trodden path will presumably have stuff down it that less people have seen (although of course the better trodden may have something better drawing people there). And yes there is a sense of ridiculousness: if you happened upon the paths just after they'd both look about the same. There wouldn't be a less trodden path.

>that thread how some guy literally lied about what is said in the genesis and the whole flock began to post about it without bothering to check
Cough cough wrong again cough cough

Lmaooooooooo