there is no point to this post.

[fox]

Except to say this:

Consider 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,
But 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.

A nice poem, sure, though I've felt cheated by the last two lines almost since the first time I read them. It's not fair to consider something trite when it was the first thing to be what it is and it's all the lame-ass imitations since then that have turned it into a cliché, so mainly I try to think of the last two lines as less sing-song (etc.) than they actually seem. I make the effort, I mean.

Because there's no good reason for Frost to have written something weak. "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
This darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness-bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

gives me goosebumps damn near every time. (The same sort of goosebumps, incidentally, that I get from Sondheim when he's at the top of his form. Because jgesteve has been talking about Assassins, I'll mention that one of my favorite Sondheim moments ever is in the last verse of "The Ballad of Czolgosz", where the Balladeer sings "Yes, and there's nowhere more fitting than in the Temple of Music by the Tower of Light between the Fountain of Abundance and the Court of Lilies at the Great Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo." [Emphasis is mine, but lack of commas is Steve's.])

But aside from the last-two-line issues I have with "The Road Not Taken", the real reason I brought it up was this:

Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

For some reason, every time I read or hear or think that line -- I doubted if I should ever come back, every time -- it makes me sad. Not pensive, or nostalgic, or philosophical, or anything like that. Actually sad. Somehow it never fails to strike me as one of the saddest things ever, ever, ever.

Comments

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

Two of my favorite poems. :) The Road Not Taken is the background of my journal. It has been put to music; funny you should mention singsong!

I feel the same about those three lines you quoted. Once a choice is made, it's hard to go back and undo it. The time has passed, the road was taken.

[the-star-fish.livejournal.com]

I am sad with you. Let's be sad together, it might help.

[jgesteve.livejournal.com]

You want I should burn you a copy of the NBCR?

Also, in Sondheim's defense there is a comma, as it is technically:

Yes, and there's nowhere more fitting than in the Temple of Music by the Tower of Light between the Fountain of Abundance and the Court of Lilies at the Great Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, in Buffalo.

It reminds me of an anecdote that was related somewhere where Bernadette Peters and Stephen Sondheim are chatting with someone and they're talking about the Witch's Rap from Into the Woods. And Bernadette's like there's no pauses for breath. And Sondheim's like that's so not true, there's one here, here, and here. like three of them in the entire song.

[axiom_of_stripe]

"stopping by the woods on a snowy evening" gives me goosebumps too. i can't say that "the road not taken" has ever made me sad, though....