On Choosing Paths －道を選ぶことについて—

I have never been much interested in poetry.  But I downloaded an audio book of poetry recently, and enjoyed a lot of the poems. 

Here is a famous and beautiful one by Robert Frost.  The narrator can see two paths through the woods in front of him.  He has to decide which path to walk down.  He looks for a long time down one path.  But he decides to take the other path, because it looks like it has been walked on a little less. 

He wonders if he has really chosen the better path.  There isn’t much difference between them.  And he realises that he will probably never have the chance to go back and try the first path. 

In life we often have to make choices between two paths.  And we will never be able to go back and see how the other choice would have turned out.

“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.

Vocabulary:

to diverge – of a road, route, etc., to separate and go in a different direction from the original path

undergrowth – a thick growth of low plants in a wood or under trees

fair – nice, lovely

(many years) hence – (many years) from now; (many years) in the future