Wrapped in its author’s subversive simplicity, this poem by New Englander Robert Frost poses, in what seems to be autumn, a dilemma for a philosophical traveller, or merely a dithering one. One tangential choice will of course lead to countless others. 
      


THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

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 stood
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 ever should 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.