(14/01/2013) The New Path

This poem is a reflection about Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”. It was inspired also by sethsnap‘s post “Your Story: Whispers of Darkness“. I wouldn’t so much call is a response to it, but I was definitely inspired by it.

 

 
I went back
To where the path had split
Someone else had been there
And paved a road on it.
 
One side was still a path
Although it was looking worn
As if a thousand people
Had walked that path before.
 
This road must have its stories
I pondered as I went
At the split I faced it
That decision once again.
 
Which path to take
I’m afraid I do not know
With this hand holding my heart
It is not courage that I show.
 
©2013 Alex Hicks

Response To Robert Frost

This is a response to Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”.

 

 
A great poet once wrote of yellow wood,
and a path that split between the trees.
He stood and pondered as long he could,
to take which path he thought he should;
To take the path he thought would please.
 
Both paths to him had looked the same;
yet he chose one that had less wear,
and said it made him who he became.
I wanted to follow without shame,
behind the poet who once stood there.
 
I have come upon this forked road,
and still I’m stopped where he had too,
but I feel as though a heavy load,
has kept me dragging, kept me slowed.
Now I am lost at what to do.
 
So Mr. Frost, I ask you now:
At this point if you were feeling low,
if you were feeling weighted down,
how would you keep your mind sound?
Down which path would you then go?
 
©2012 Alex Hicks

The Road Not Taken

So I figure I’ll share with you one of my favourite poems by one of my favourite poets. Robert Frost, The Road not Taken.

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,
 
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked 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 traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
 
-Robert Frost, 1916, Mountain Interval

Quote #6

Robert Frost is easily my favourite poet.
 

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
 – Robert Frost