The Road Not Taken, and Nothing Gold Can Stay

1921 Words4 Pages

Robert Frost was one of America's greatest poets. From 1874 - 1963 he

has written many famous poems including "Nothing Gold can stay" and

"The Road not taken" which I will be writing about. He lived in San

Francisco and sadly died in Boston in 1963. He moved to Massachusetts

when he was eleven and went to the local high school. He then

continues to go to Dartmouth College.

The Road Not Taken is a poem about decisions in life and how each one

leads onto another road, spreading into a vast complexity of

situations and life. The roads symbolise decisions and how each

decision effects the whole journey ahead of him.

The first verse is about his first decision in the network of roads

that he could have taken. He ponders which road to follow and wonders

what the consequences of each road could lead to. He tries to look

into the future by peering down the road to where it makes a turn!

The first line, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" means that he

has to walk down one of two roads leading in opposite directions and

the yellow wood could be a screen blocking his vision into the future

of his choice. In the second line, " And sorry I could not travel

both", means that he wished he could have chosen both to compare each

road to the other road and choose the one he preferred. However, he

could not do this because once he had chosen one path, he could not

retrace his footsteps and tread the other path. The third line, "And

be one traveller, long I stood", means that he took a long time and

had thought a lot about which road to enter. By him being a traveller

it means that he is just one more person who has to make this

decision. He has to travel through a network of randomly generated

decisions, and to...

... middle of paper ...

...ing gold can stay" is

saying that nothing beautiful lasts. I personally agree with this

statement as it applies to all things in today's modern society.

Nothing good will ever last. We will all die one day and anything good

we did have will be gone.

I really enjoyed studying these poems because they all related to life

and how life works. They have a similar style and at first I did not

have a clue what was being told. Once you look at the poems in more

depth though, you can see the points they are trying to get across. I

would not recommend these poems to anyone though, because people might

find them boring as I did from the beginning.

Putting both poems side by side, I can say that I enjoyed studying

"Nothing gold can stay" more than the other because I understood the

issues more clearly and I liked the way Robert Frost put the seasons

into a poem.

Open Document