In checking out an email notification that I had a new follower on Twitter–Ellen Wade Beals–I came across this Robert Frost poem on her website Solace in a Book. I don’t ever remember finding such depth of meaning in these words of Frost’s, which I had read before–hadn’t I?–so much so that when I read it through for the second time hours later, examining each word with a critical eye, I found no mention of redemption, purpose and soul. Perhaps, like that very first time I read the poem all those years ago, I was reading it with my mind again, and not my heart.

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.

 

Robert Frost