![]() ![]() Life and its ways never woven in a straight line. And for Thomas, the road he chose really did make a difference: tragically, he was killed during the Battle of Arras in 1917. Robert Frosts The Road Not taken deals with the complexities of life. Indeed, Frost’s poem may even have been what inspired Thomas to make up his mind and finally choose which ‘road’ to follow: he chose war over America, and ‘The Road Not Taken’ is, perhaps, what forced his hand. Oh, I kept the first for another day Yet knowing how way leads on to way. Mending Wall is only one of many poems inspired by Frost’s years living on a 30-acre farm in Derry from 1900 to 1911. The Road Not Taken is the opening poem in Robert Frost’s third collection of poems titled Mountain Interval, published in 1916. ![]() What is also less well-known than it should be about ‘The Road Not Taken’ is the fact that the poem may have begun life as Frost’s gentle ribbing of his friend, the English poet Edward Thomas, with whom Frost had taken many walks during the pre-WWI years when Frost had been living in England.įrost found Thomas to be an indecisive man, and after he’d written ‘The Road Not Taken’ but before it was published, he sent it to Thomas, whose indecisiveness even extended to uncertainty over whether to follow Frost to the United States or to enlist in the army and go and fight in France.įrost intended the poem to be a semi-serious mockery of people like Thomas, but it was taken more seriously by Thomas, and by countless readers since. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down.
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