The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST
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
kept 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.
Mr. Flood's Party
Old Eben Flood, climbing
alone one night
Over the hill between the
town below
And the forsaken upland
hermitage
That held as much as he
should ever know
On earth again of home,
paused warily.
The road was his with not a
native near;
And Eben, having leisure,
said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury
Town to hear:
"Well, Mr. Flood, we
have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have
many more;
The bird is on the wing,
the poet says,
And you and I have said it
here before.
Drink to the bird." He
raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so
far to fill,
And answered huskily:
"Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I
believe I will."
Alone, as if enduring to
the end
A valiant armor of scarred
hopes outworn,
He stood there in the
middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding
a silent horn.
Below him, in the town
among the trees,
Where friends of other days
had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the
dead
Rang thinly till old Eben's
eyes were dim.
Then, as a mother lays her
sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it
may awake,
He set the jug down slowly
at his feet
With trembling care,
knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that
on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain
lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced
away,
And with his hand extended
paused again:
"Well, Mr. Flood, we
have not met like this
In a long time; and many a
change has come
To both of us, I fear,
since last it was
We had a drop together.
Welcome home!"
Convivially returning with
himself,
Again he raised the jug up
to the light;
And with an acquiescent
quaver said:
"Well, Mr. Flood, if
you insist, I might.
"Only a very little,
Mr. Flood—
For auld lang syne. No
more, sir; that will do."
So, for the time,
apparently it did,
And Eben evidently thought
so too;
For soon amid the silver
loneliness
Of night he lifted up his
voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons
listening,
Until the whole harmonious
landscape rang—
"For auld lang syne."
The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and
the song being done,
He raised again the jug
regretfully
And shook his head, and was
again alone.
There was not much that was
ahead of him,
And there was nothing in
the town below—
Where strangers would have
shut the many doors
That many
friends had opened long ago.
Hay for the Horses
He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."