The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost, Mountain Interval (1916)
Frost's poem on choice and memory, first published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1915 and collected in Mountain Interval the following year.
Download the handwriting worksheet (PDF)Printable, ruled for handwriting: copy it by hand, then type it here.
About this text
Frost wrote this poem partly as a gentle joke aimed at his friend Edward Thomas, who often agonized over which path to take on their walks together in England and then regretted whichever one he'd chosen. Frost was reportedly surprised, and a little exasperated, that readers took it so seriously as a statement about individualism, rather than the wry poem about indecision he intended.
The poem's famous last lines are often misquoted as praising the road "less traveled by" as though it were clearly the better choice, but the poem itself says the two roads were worn "really about the same" — the difference is invented afterward, in the story the speaker tells about it. Copying the whole poem, not just the last stanza, is the only way to catch that gap between what happens and what gets remembered.
What to watch for
- 2 semicolons: a semicolon joins two complete thoughts that belong together, a pause longer than a comma but shorter than a period.
- 1 colon: a colon points ahead to what explains or completes the first half of the sentence.
- 1 dash: a dash marks a sudden break or an added thought; notice how it changes the rhythm when read aloud.
- 1 exclamation or question mark: ask the child how the sentence should sound when read aloud, and why the writer chose that mark.
- Longest word: "undergrowth" (11 letters). Try spelling it aloud once before reaching it.
- 20 lines averaging about 7 words each. A comfortable line length for a single sitting.
Full text (reference)
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.