The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost - Book Report/Review Example

Roads Brief and Long: Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and A.E. Housman's "To An Athlete Dying Young" A.E Housman's elegy addressed to an athlete dying young celebrates the athlete's meteoric career and the fact his brief life helped to ensure at least that he did not wear out his "honours" (162). Robert Frost's short poem could, perhaps, also be considered elegiac in a sense, highlighting as it does the brief life of the choices open to humankind. In fact, there is an obvious element of regret in Frost's poem too, especially in his "sigh" (236) in the last stanza.

The first stanza of "To An Athlete Dying Young" recalls the athlete's most triumphant moment-"the time you won your town the race"-when the boy had been chaired through the market-place and brought home "shoulder-high" amidst cheers and hurrahs. The very next stanza captures the sadness of the present moment. Now, the boy is again being carried "shoulder-high" along "the road all runners come", and he has been set down at the threshold of "a stiller town." Housman muses, apparently without irony, on some of the advantages of dying young that have accrued to the athlete.

He has been a "smart lad" to slip away so early from earthly fields where glory is transient. On earth, the laurel may be quicker to grow than the rose, but it withers quicker too. The athlete will be spared the knowledge of his records on the field being broken and his "stopped ears" will not note the absence of cheers. Best of all, the boy will be spared the pain of watching his "honours" wear out-it cannot be said of him that "the name died before the man." Where he has gone "the strengthless dead" will flock around him to admire the laurel garland "briefer than a girl's" but ever "unwithered" round his head.

Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" laments the brief life and the inevitable death of a possibility spurned by a man on the horns of a dilemma. The 'traveler' in the poem sees "two roads" diverge "in a yellow wood." Profoundly sorry that he "could not travel both/And be one traveler", he stands transfixed at the spot for some time, looking down one of the roads "as far as I could" before taking the other (perhaps, after not so protracted an examination of its possibilities). The traveler records the fact that the road he took was "as just as fair" as the one he did not take.

He implies that at the moment of choice he thought that it had "perhaps the better claim, /Because it was grassy and wanted wear". In retrospect, however, he has to admit that in actuality, "the passing there/Had worn them really about the same". The fact is that "both that morning equally lay/ In leaves no step had trodden black." The road he took had only appeared to be "less traveled by." The speaker notes that he had then consoled himself with the thought that he would keep "the first for another day".

Still, even at that time, in younger and perhaps less wiser days, he had known "how way leads on to way" in the road of life and had even then "doubted if I should ever come back." The title of the poem is the key to understanding its subtle elegiac tone. The poet has not called it "The Road Taken" but "The Road Not Taken." The poet is, clearly, mourning the death of one possibility rather than celebrating the fruition of another. In a voice that is already dripping regret, the poet sees himself "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.

Works Cited Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken." The Pocket Book of Modern Verse. Ed. Oscar Williams. New York: Washington Square, 1967. 236. Housman, A.E. "To an Athlete Dying Young." Pocket Book of Modern Verse. 162.