Practical guidebooks for the more adventurous traveller.
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The Walker's Anthology - Further Tales

The Walker's Anthology - Further Tales

Excerpt:
Sample 2: The Road Not Taken, 1915


Contents | Introduction | Sample 1: Encounter with a bear, 2007 | Sample 2: The Road Not Taken, 1915 | Sample 3: Preparations for a long walk, 1933 | Sample 4: Travels in West Africa, 1894


 

The Road Not Taken, 1915

ROBERT FROST

It is interesting to compare this poem by Robert Frost (1874-1963) with the less optimistic one written by his friend Edward Thomas (see p43).

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, 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 travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

(From Mountain Interval; Henry Holt, New York, 1916, © Robert Frost)

The Walker's Anthology - Further Tales

Excerpts:

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