as confirmed that the poem’s speaker is based on his friend Edward Thomas, stating that Thomas was “a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other” (Andrews, 1839).“The Road Not Taken” is made up of four stanzas of five lines each and has a roughly iambic rhythm. The poem begins with the speaker walking through the forest on an autumn day where the leaves have changed to yellow, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood." He is faced with two paths, or roads, that lead in different directions, and he must choose which path to take. He regrets that he cannot follow both roads, and pauses a while before making his choice, “And sorry I could not travel both....And be one traveler, long I stood.” At first, one road seems as if it might be the better of the two, “And having perhaps the better claim.” However, he soon determines them to be pretty much equal, “And both that morning equally lay.” He tries to reassure himself by stating that he will come back and take the other road someday, “Oh, I kept the first for another day!”; But he realistically recognizes that life is easy to get caught up in, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back." The speaker returns to feelings of uncertainty and regret. There are really two ways to interpret the way this poem ends - a negative way, which would be the speaker having feelings of regret, or a positive way, which would be the speaker having feelings of relief. There are two things that may lead us to believe that the speaker believes he will later regret his choice: First, he believes that he shall, someday, “be telling this with a sigh." Second, is the title of the poem itself, “The Road Not Taken," which could imply that the reader will never stop thinking about the other path he could have taken. At the same time, these two ...
