The Road Not Taken

"Roads" by Edward Thomas (1916)

Seen as a necessary, sobering response to Frost’s wry and ironic poem by the young poet to whom Frost directed his poem, this poem, earnest and dramatic in its delivery, uses Frost’s controlling metaphor of life’s crossroad choices to explore the tragic and haunted decision by so many in their generation to serve in the army and fight overseas, never to return, the very fate that awaited Thomas himself when, driven by what he perceived to be Frost’s taunting, he decided to join the army. He died three months later during a German artillery attack.

"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley (1888)

A bold and dramatic declaration of the power of the individual to make courageous decisions and to follow, uncomplicated by second-guessing, the difficult path that the heart and the soul demand. This often-quoted example of High Victorian wisdom poetry is exactly the poem that more than a century of Frost’s readers have wanted “The Road Not Taken” to be. Absent of metaphor or irony, the poem boldly celebrates those who go their own way. This poem provides an example of the literary context, since this was exactly the didactic homily poetry that Frost rejected.