Frost and Melancholia

There are so many decisions that pass us by almost unnoticed, leaving a lasting impression only because too late we can recognize them for what they were... quietly crucial moments that shape not only where we are, but who we have become.

I dislike poetry.. it's just never appealed to me very much. I'll read the occasional turn of phrase that sticks out because it's exceptionally clever or unexpectedly funny..but for the most poetry leaves me cold.

The one poem that has ever really hit a nerve with me is Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken". The first time I read it, it just felt true to me... how the smallest choices lead us from one point to another until we're so far from where we began that there's no way we'll ever be able to go back.

Anyway..... enough melancholia. I stumbled across the poem again earlier and wanted to throw it up on here.. so here it is.. Frost's "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 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