"Nature's first green is gold" ......................Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Frost's poem contains the perfect image of Vermont's spring landscape. The hardwoods lose their leaves in autumn and stay bare through the winter. In spring, the first green to appear is really gold as the buds break open. The willows and maples have this temporary gold hue. In only a few days, the leaves mature to green.

Figurative Language

Figurative language uses "figures of speech" - a way of saying something other than the literal meaning of the words. For example, "All the world's a stage" Frost often referred to them simply as "figures." Frost said, "Every poem I write is figurative in two senses. It will have figures in it, of course; but it's also a figure in itself - a figure for something, and it's made so that you can get more than one figure out of it." Cook Voices p235

Metaphor A figure of speech in which a comparison is made between two things essentially unalike. To Frost, metaphor is really what poetry is all about. He is notably a poet of metaphors more than anything else. This is so important, we should hear directly from the poet. Frost said," Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, 'grace metaphors,' and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, 'Why don't you say what you mean?' We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections - whether from diffidence or from some other instinct". ... Excerpt from an essay entitled "Education by Poetry" by Robert Frost.

Examples:

The Silken Tent. A woman is admired for her strength and beauty, like a silken tent. Note the strength of the silk and cedar.

Putting in the Seed. The planting of seed in the garden, in springtime is like making love.

Devotion. The passive but ever-changing shore and the persistent energetic ocean are like a devoted couple.

To Earthward. The stages of love are like stepping stones to death.

All Revelation. A view of a geode crystal is like the mind probing the universe. (Go back to Table)

Simile A figure of speech in which a comparison is expressed by the specific use of a word or phrase such as: like, as, than, seems or Frost's favorite "as if,"

Examples:

Mending Wall: like an old-stone savage armed

Stars: like some snow-white/ Minerva's snow-white marble eyes

Going for Water: We ran as if to meet the moon ---- we paused / like gnomes

Birches: Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Hyla Brook: Like ghost of sleigh bells (Table)

Symbol A thing (could be an object, person, situation or action) which stands for something else more abstract. For example our flag is the symbol of our country. The use of symbols in Frost's poetry is less obvious. Frost was not known as a Symbolist. Actually, the Symbolists were a late 19th century movement reacting against realism. Frost rebelled against this movement and preferred to use metaphors. There are certain signature images that become symbols when we look at Frost's complete work. Flowers, stars, dark woods and spring (the water kind) are consistent symbols in Frost's poetry and should be noted here. As with many other poetic devices, Frost had his own way of keeping the rule and breaking the rule. Cook Dimensions p197

Frost said, "If my poetry has to have a name, I'd prefer to call it Emblemism," not "Symbolism," which is all too likely to clog up and kill a poem." Burnshaw p283

Examples:

The Road Not Taken: the forked road represents choices in life. The road in this poem is a text book example of a symbol.

Rose Pogonias: Early in Frost's poetry, flowers become a symbol for the beloved, his wife Elinor.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: even though there is no one overt symbol in the poem, the entire journey can represent life's journey. "Dark woods" also become a powerful recurring symbol in Frost.

The Pasture and Directive. Spring (as in water spring) is very meaningful in Frost's poetry. Spring represents origin or source, almost in a Proustian sense. Other variations include "brook" Hyla Brook and West-Running Brook. Water often deals with an emotional state.

Come In: "But no, I was out for stars." The star is one of the chief symbolic images in Frost's poetry. (Table)

Personification A type of metaphor in which distinct human qualities, e.g., honesty, emotion, volition, etc., are attributed to an animal, object or idea.

Examples:

My November Guest: the guest is Sorrow, personified as a woman dearly loved who walks with him.

Mowing: the scythe whispers

Range-Finding: the spider sullenly withdraws

Tree at my Window: the tree watches him sleep; it has tongues talking aloud

Storm Fear: the wind works and whispers, the cold creeps, the whole storm is personified (Table)

Apostrophe A figure of speech in which someone absent or dead OR something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present.

Examples:

Take Something Like a Star: the poem begins, "O Star," He addresses the star throughout the poem.

Tree at my Window: He addresses the tree throughout: "Tree at my window, window tree."

Mending Wall: speaking to the stones that make up the barrier, he says, "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

Synecdoche A figure of speech which mentions a part of something to suggest the whole. As in, "All hands on deck," meaning all sailors to report for duty. Hands = sailors. Frost said, "I started calling myself a Synecdochist when other called themselves Imagists or Vorticists."

Examples:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: The little journey in the poem represents life's journey.

The Gift Outright: The gift represents the history of the United States.

I Will Sing You One-O: Two clock towers striking One o'clock represent extensions of earthly and heavenly time.

Kitty Hawk: Man's first flight represents man's yearning for God or heaven.

Fire and Ice: The heat of love and the cold of hate are seen as having cataclysmic power.

Metonymy A figure of speech that uses a concept closely related to the thing actually meant. The substitution makes the analogy more vivid and meaningful.

Examples:

Out, Out: the injured boy holds up his hand "as if to keep / the life from spilling." The literal meaning is to keep the blood from spilling. Frost's line tells us that the hand is bleeding and the boy's life is in danger. (Table)

Allegory or Parable A poem in the form of a narrative or story that has a second meaning beneath the surface one. Frost is notable for his use of the parable using the description to evoke an idea. Some critics call him a "Parablist."

Examples:

After Apple-Picking: the apple harvest suggests accomplishment

The Grindstone: the grinding of the blade suggests the idea of judging and recognizing limits

The Lockless Door: a story of self escape

Birches: the climbing suggests the value of learning and experience

Design: the incident suggests a universal design (Table)

Paradox A statement or situation containing apparently contradictory or incompatible elements, but on closer inspection may be true.

Examples:

Nothing Gold Can Stay: green is gold

The Gift Outright: "And forthwith found salvation in surrender."

Ghost House: I dwell in a house that vanished.

Fire and Ice:"But if it had to perish twice"

The Tuft of Flowers: men work together whether they work together or apart.

Hyperbole A bold, deliberate overstatement not intended to be taken literally, it is used as a means of emphasizing the truth of a statement. This is relatively rare in Frost. He has a penchant for fact and truth.

Example:

A Star in a Stoneboat: A meteorite is found in a field and supposed to be a star which has fallen to earth

Etherealizing: The idea of reducing ourselves simply to a brain.

After Apple-Picking: Ten thousand thousand fruit to touch.

Stopping by Woods: The woods filling up with snow.

The Milky Way is a Cowpath (title) (Table)

Understatement The presentation of a thing with underemphasis in order to achieve a greater effect. Frost uses this device extensively, often as a means of irony. His love poems are especially understated. He cautions, "Never larrup an emotion."

Examples:

Fire and Ice: Ice, which for destruction is great, "will suffice."

Mowing: "Anything more than the truth would have seemed to weak" This is almost Frost's definition of understatement

Hyla Brook: the last line "We love the things we love for what they are."

My November Guest: The speaker appreciates the November landscape, but leaves it to his "guest" to praise.

Brown's Descent: After falling down an ice crusted slope, Farmer Brown still clutching his lantern says, "Ile's (oil's) 'bout out!"

Irony Verbal irony is a figure of speech when an expression used is the opposite of the thought in the speaker's mind, thus conveying a meaning that contradicts the literal definition. Dramatic irony is a literary or theatrical device of having a character utter words which the the reader or audience understands to have a different meaning, but of which the character himself is unaware. Irony of situation is when a situation occurs which is quite the reverse of what one might have expected. Often, Frost's use of irony convey's one meaning by word and syntax, and another by the tone of voice it indicates. The tone contradicts the words. Frost's irony is usually tricky because it is so subtle.

Examples:

Birches: Dramatic irony the wish to get away from earth may not be granted too soon

Range-Finding: Irony of situation when the spider is disturbed by a bullet but finds it unimportant.

The Road Not Taken: Verbal irony - the speaker knows he will tell the old story "with a sigh" of a choice that "made all the difference."

Ghost House: Irony of situation when daylight falls (usually night falls) into a place that was supposed to be dark in order too keep things for survival.The cellar was a storeroom filled with things to get you through the winter. In this case, daylight is dissolution of the proper and good use of the place. Wild raspberries now grow where fruit used to be stored. This poem is full of irony.

Stars: Minerva, the goddess of wisdom but her eyes are without the gift of sight. (Table)

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Introduction to Symbolism

Part I

Symbolism is one of the most powerful tools the writer has available because of its ability to communicate a great deal concisely and compactly while at the same time involving the reader in the work. Understanding symbolism—what it is, how it functions, and what kinds of meaning it can communicate—requires a certain amount of effort because it doesn’t function in quite the same manner as any other literary device and in some ways is more complex than any other literary device; as a result, there are frequent misconceptions about symbolism and symbols. Hopefully, this discussion will provide a useful introduction to symbolism in poetry.

Most standard definitions of “symbol” are similar to this: “a symbol is something that means more than it is or that stands for something other than itself.” While that’s absolutely correct, it also frankly isn’t really all that helpful. We will attempt to explore the nature of symbolism in enough detail that this definition will begin to make sense.

One place to begin is to look at what a symbol isn’t. Most importantly (because symbols are often confused with metaphors), a symbol isn’t a metaphor (although, to complicate matters, a metaphor can be a symbol—but we’ll get to that a bit later). Here are three reasons why not:

1. A metaphor is by definition a non-literal statement; in other words, what a metaphor says isn’t literally true. When Keats says:

“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken . . . ,”

we know that he doesn’t mean for us to see the planet as an actual fish or aquatic mammal that’s really swimming along with fins or flippers; we are not intended to take the statement as literally true.

However, that is not the case with a symbol: a symbol actually and literally is exactly what the writer says it is; it just happens to be something else in addition.

2. A metaphor operates on the basis of similarity; there is some necessary way in which what is used as a metaphor (the vehicle) resembles that to which it refers (the tenor). Thus, in the Keats’ example, it is the motion of the planet—a steady, regular motion—that resembles the motion of something that is swimming.

Again, with a symbol, there is no necessary point of similarity between that which is used as a symbol and that which it represents.

3. The meaning of a metaphor is based on the similarity between vehicle and tenor, and the meaning can be determined by identifying the similarity (or similarities) between the two.

However, since there is no essential similarity between a symbol and what it represents, the meaning of the symbol cannot necessarily be derived by identifying some similarity between the two. Among other things, this means that, unlike with a metaphor, the meaning of a symbol is not necessarily readily or easily apparent, nor can it even always be determined that something which is functioning as a symbol is functioning as such upon first encountering it.

As a consequence of these points, a symbol is qualitatively different from a metaphor and functions in a completely different way.

Now that we’ve seen what a symbol isn’t, let’s look at what a symbol is.

A symbol is something that simultaneously possesses two different types of meaning.

The first type of meaning a symbol possesses is “literal meaning.” That which functions as a symbol is, to begin with, always an image, always something specific, definite, concrete, and directly apprehensible by the senses. Anything that fits this category may function as a symbol: an object (either animate or inanimate), a place, a person, an event, an action, even a metaphor. What is important to remember is that what is used as a symbol is actually there; if the poet chooses to use a rock or a weevil as a symbol, then that rock or that weevil is actually there in the scene being described (unlike the fish/aquatic mammal of Keats’ metaphor), and the poet is talking about an actual rock or weevil. It’s just that what he says about the rock/weevil causes it to come to stand for or to represent something else at the same time.

The second type of meaning is that “representational meaning.” Because of the way the poet handles the literal object/etc., it comes to stand for or to represent something else. What it stands for is always abstract: thoughts, feelings, ideas, beliefs, etc. Further, what it stands for is not a single abstract or generalized quality but a whole class of closely-related qualities, all of which are being evoked through the symbol. It is this attribute—the ability to evoke a whole series of “meanings”—that gives the symbol its depth and power.

Let’s look at a simple example that uses a familiar cultural symbol—a symbol in common use that most of us are familiar with. If you take a rectangular piece of white cloth and paint a smaller blue rectangle in the upper left corner with 50 white stars, then paint 7 red and 6 white stripes over the rest of the piece of cloth, what do you end up with? Literally, you have a piece of painted cloth. However, because of the way that particular pattern of painted cloth has been used over the past 200+ years, a whole series of things have come to be associated with it that it is said to “stand for” or to represent; some of these would include (these are actual answers from my past students): freedom, democracy, patriotism, strength, justice, honor, truth, sacrifice, courage, opposition to tyranny. (Obviously, to those who aren’t U. S. citizens, there may well be an entirely different set of abstractions it represents.) Now, it isn’t that that piece of painted cloth stands for any one of those qualities—it stands for ALL of them, and others that one could come up with as well. That is what a symbol represents: a whole class of related abstract qualities. In using the literal object (the piece of painted cloth), one is evoking that entire class of qualities.

That leads directly into another important attribute of a symbol: it may well have different significances ("meanings") for different individuals. Exactly what significance it will have for any one individual depends upon that individual's personal experiences, background, etc.; since different individuals have different backgrounds and experiences, the symbol may have different specific meanings for each, because each brings something different to the viewing and reaction to the symbol. But ultimately the true meaning of the symbol is the composite class, not just one specific "meaning"; the symbol is not exhausted of meaning by assigning one specific association to it. It is in this sense (so frequently misunderstand) that a symbol--or a poem employing a symbol--may be said to have different meanings for different individuals. However, one who genuinely understands symbolism knows not to stop with assigning one specific meaning to a symbol but to look for the underlying pattern of meanings which embraces the class as a whole. It is that which gives the symbol its real power.

Obviously, there is no similarity between the literal object--a piece of painted cloth-- and what it represents--those qualities U. S. citizens associate with their country--, nor can one deduce what the object represents upon encountering it for the first time. Rather, one would have to see it used over a period of time to begin to form a clear idea of what the class of abstractions is it represents. The same is often true with a literary symbol, as well.

So what does all this mean for the use of symbolism in poetry? In Part II, we'll begin to see through an examination of a clearly symbolic poem, Frost's "The Road Not Taken."

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"Poetry is not a code to be broken but a way of seeing with the eyes shut." -- Linda Pastan

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Part II

In "The Road Not Taken," Frost makes use of the traditional symbol of a crossroads (itself derived from one of the earliest and most important metaphors in Western literature, that of life as a journey), to represent a significant choice in life. However, before we begin to look at the representational level of the two roads, let's look at the poem in strictly literal terms to see what Frost does with them and how he uses them to indicate the kind of choice that's being made, which is the important question in the poem.

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.

In strictly literal terms-and there is nothing at the beginning of the poem that really indicates we are to look at the poem in any terms other than strictly literal--the speaker, someone who has been traveling down a road, arrives at a fork. Obviously, he can't go in both directions (we'll have more to say about this detail later), so he looks down each of the roads, attempting to assess each one. He compares the two based on their appearances as part of his decisionmaking process. These comparative descriptions take up 8 lines of a 20-line poem, so obviously the details are of importance. Notice particularly the details he gives of the two roads. While it's true that one is a bit less worn than the other, the comparison is exactly that: a comparison, not a contrast, not a discussion of differences. Virtually all the details explain the ways in which the two roads are alike, not how they differ. The similarity is repeatedly emphasized: the less traveled road has "perhaps" (not "certainly") a "better claim"; both roads actually "worn . . . really about the same"; on this particular day, neither has been traveled on and the two roads are "equally" attractive to the speaker; and the road he finally chooses is "just as fair" as, not fairer than, the road he doesn't choose. Finally, underscoring the fact that the speaker finds both roads desirable, he says he is going to save the first "for another day," that he is going to return and travel down that road, too. If we fail to see where the real emphasis lies in this descriptive passage, we will fail to understand what the poem is actually communicating.

Up to this point--through the first 13 lines of a 20-line poem--everything that has been said has dealt with two literal roads, and there hasn't been anything to suggest that we are to see them as anything else. However, it is at this point that Frost for the first time introduces something that should alert us to look for something more, for something beyond a strictly literal description of two actual roads. When the speaker says,

"Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back,"

this first indication that the two roads are something other than roads appears. For, if the roads were literal, the speaker could always return and travel down the other. Here, the suggestion is introduced that the decision which is being made is not a reversable decision, that there is possibly something irrevocable about the choice he is making. Frost has even hinted at this early in the poem, in lines 2 and 3, but the explicit meaning of those lines becomes clear only after we have reached this point in the poem. And the last stanza confirms this suggestion by emphasizing that the choice he's making is a significant one, so significant that it may well affect the rest of his life and that he will continue to think about long after ("ages and ages hence") the choice has been made and his life has been altered as a consequence ("that has made all the difference"). (What the consequence is, whether the speaker is happy or unhappy with his choice--these are things that are not part of the poem.) By the time we have completed the last 7 lines, then, we should be aware that the roads are indeed symbols, not just literal roads, and they represent something about the nature of the choice the speaker is making.

So what kind of choice is the speaker making? The answer lies entirely in what he tells us about the two roads. And what he's told us through the lengthy description of their similarities is that they are equally desirable. But the last 7 lines further emphasize that the choice between the two roads is a mutually exclusive choice. In other words, the two roads come to represent a choice between two equally desirable alternatives one of which must be given up in order to have the other. This is the class of representative meaning the symbol of the two roads communicates.

Obviously, there are many such choices that fit the pattern here, and different individuals will have experienced differing specific choices. A choice between two entirely different occupations, a choice between two different individuals to marry, a choice of whether or not to have children, a choice of whether to stay in one location or move to another--these are only a few examples of specific life-altering choices that fit the general pattern Frost has created, and each individual will bring his memories of the particular choices he made which fit that pattern. But the poem isn't about any one specific choice; it is, instead, about making a particular kind of choice. Because the consequence, as Frost shows in the last stanza, is that--whatever specific major choice of this type we may make--we probably never quite stop thinking about the alternative and what things might have been like had we take the other road. The title, in fact, serves to underscore what is really important in the poem: "The Road Not Taken" makes clear right from the beginning that the poem is not about what the speaker did but about what he didn't do.

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"Poetry is not a code to be broken but a way of seeing with the eyes shut." -- Linda Pastan

Part III

Archibald MacLeish’s “You, Andrew Marvell” is another poem which employs symbolism to communicate with the reader, although MacLeish’s use of symbolism is somewhat more complex than that of Frost in “The Road Not Taken.” For that reason, it’s worth looking at how he goes about using it in some detail.

“You, Andrew Marvell”

And here face down beneath the sun

And here upon earth's noonward height

To feel the always coming on

The always rising of the night:

To feel creep up the curving east

The earthy chill of dusk and slow

Upon those under lands the vast

And ever climbing shadow grow

And strange at Ecbatan the trees

Take leaf by leaf the evening strange

The flooding dark about their knees

The mountains over Persia change

And now at Kermanshah the gate

Dark empty and the withered grass

And through the twilight now the late

Few travelers in the westward pass

And Baghdad darken and the bridge

Across the silent river gone

And through Arabia the edge

Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra's street

The wheel rut in the ruined stone

And Lebanon fade out and Crete

high through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air

Still flashing with the landward gulls

And loom and slowly disappear

The sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under and the shore

Of Africa the gilded sand

And evening vanish and no more

The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea:

And here face downward in the sun

To feel how swift how secretly

The shadow of the night comes on . . .

As with “The Road Not Take,” let’s begin first by looking strictly at the literal level of the poem. The speaker is lying face down (on a beach on the shore of Lake Michigan, according to MacLeish), and the time is noon (why he’s lying down, and “face down,” at that, we’ll return to later). As he lies there, he pictures in his imagination the arrival of night at a series of different locations—Ecbatan, Persia, Kermanshah, Baghdad, Palmyra, and so on. What’s important about this list is that it consists of actual locations arranged in approximate geographical order from east to west, so that each location is further west and progressively closer to the speaker’s location; the result is that, by the end of the poem, we are approaching his position as is the end of day itself. Also, the series begins roughly one-fourth of the way around the Earth to the east from the speaker’s location. So what we are shown in the course of the poem is the coming of night over one-fourth of the Earth’s surface; this also means that, since it was noon at the poem’s beginning and almost sunset at its end, the action of the poem covers a period of roughly six hours.

At the literal level, then, what we have is the speaker imagining the ending of the day at a series of locations covering one-fourth of the Earth’s surface. Now, we could, of course, simply stop at this point and enjoy the poem just as a descriptive one (just as we could stop at the literal level of “The Road Not Taken” and enjoy it simply as a description of two literal roads). To do so, however, is to miss what MacLeish is actually communicating to us. To understand what that is, we need to look to the representational level of the work, and that involves examining closely two different elements in the poem.

The first of these is that list of places already mentioned. In choosing them, MacLeish was careful not only to choose locations that were arranged in geographical order but also to choose locations that are arranged in chronological order; each of the locations mentioned was at one time the center of an important, thriving civilization , and they are introduced in roughly the order in which they appeared in human history—earliest to latest. In fact, the locations given approximately span all 6,000 years of recorded human civilization. Equally important, each of these civilizations has now disappeared—none of them exists any longer.

The second element is MacLeish’s descriptions throughout the poem of the arrival of night. One of the things that should stand out in reading this poem is that his descriptions are both unusual and consistent. Normally, we speak of the “fall of night,” but MacLeish again and again refers to “The always rising of the night”—precisely the opposite of our normal expression. Further, throughout the poem he repeatedly describes the locations as disappearing underneath the darkness and the night as being above those locations. It is as if they are being covered by something. And he makes clear in the third stanza how we are to look at this unusual motion: the coming of the night is there identified as “The flooding dark.” In short, what MacLeish is doing is using a metaphor: the night is a flood, a destructive force which not only covers the locations but appears to destroy them at the same time. We can see this, for instance, in the lines “the bridge /Across the silent river gone” with its double meaning: the bridge disappears into darkness and can no longer be seen, but simultaneously it is as if the bridge is “gone” because it has been swept away by the “flood.” Other examples include: "To feel creep up the curving east / The earthy chill of dusk"; "those under lands"; "deepen on Palmyra's street"; "over Sicily"; "Spain go under." So the “coming of night” is more than just a change in the time as measured by the clock; the “coming of night” is itself a force which destroys what it encompasses.

The representational (or symbolic) meaning thus becomes clearer: the literal action of the arrival of night comes to represent the passage of time itself, but, more specifically, that fact that the passage of time is destructive; it destroys everything human—up to and including entire civilizations—as it passes. The previous human civilizations mentioned have all vanished, and by the end of the poem the darkness is approaching the speaker’s location and his civilization, which the poem suggests will not escape the same fate any more than earlier civilizations have. Further, the 6,000 years of recorded human history have been condensed into the six hours the action of the poem encompasses; time not only destroys but it passes rapidly: there’s little difference between six hours and 6,000 years. The class which is represented, then, is that class of human aspects of life that are destroyed by time, from the individual up to entire civilizations. For, just as the speaker’s civilization is facing destruction, so is the speaker himself; he can no more escape the destructive power of time than can anything else human. (The emphasis here is on “human” because everything we are shown in the poem is human-related; certainly, other things are destroyed by time, as well, but MacLeish deliberately chooses not to bring them to our attention).

Recognizing this pattern, then, we can return to the poem to answer the question of why the speaker is lying face down throughout the poem. The answer is that, confronting the fact that nothing human can endure, the speaker has given up; what’s the point of making any effort to accomplish anything if nothing lasts? So he’s lying down passively, just waiting for time to take him. And he’s “face down” because he’s trying not to see what’s about to happen, but his imagination shows him anyway. Again, as in the case of Frost's poem, the title helps to guide us: "You, Andrew Marvell" serves to call our attention to Marvell's best-known poem "To His Coy Mistress," a poem which is also about the brevity of human life and the speed with which time moves, but the attitude there is in direct contrast to that of MacLeish's poem, because Marvell's speaker sees the shortness of life as motivation for "seizing the day," for making use of what little time he has to get something worthwhile out of life while MacLeish's speaker sees the same situation as cause only for complete surrender to the inevitable and total paralysis of the will.

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"Poetry is not a code to be broken but a way of seeing with the eyes shut." -- Linda Pastan

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Part IV

What we've seen, then, is that there is a distinct process involved in the creation of a symbol: The writer begins with something which is literal and specific; in the course of presenting that something in the poem, the writer associates a great deal of focused, concrete detail with the something which serves to invest the something with meaning beyond the strictly literal while simultaneously directing the reader to look beyond the merely literal; that meaning takes the form of a class of related abstractions, so that the something comes to represent or stand for a number of specific, individual meanings rather than a single meaning; understanding the symbol involves identifying the class rather than a single representative of that class.

So, Frost begins with the two literal roads and, through his descriptions which focus on their equality of value as well as the indications that the choice being made is an irrevocable one, develops the two roads as a symbol for a choice between equally desirable but mutually exclusive goals. Similarly, MacLeish begins with the literal action of the coming of night and, through his descriptions of that action as a metaphor (the flood) for something destructive as well as the geographical and historical significance of the specific places he names, develops that action into a symbol for how the passage of time destroys human life and human endeavor. Each poem begins literally but by the time we have reached the end, there are questions raised in the reader's mind about many of the details associated with the literal things-the two roads, the coming of night-that are unaccounted for if the literal things are understood only literally; this, in turn, leads the reader to further investigate the significance of those details and to see that the full significance of those details can be understood only if the originally literal things are also understood as symbols, as well.

This process of investing the literal with representational meaning is one that normally proceeds throughout the poem, and often it is only late in the poem--or even after we have finished reading it for the first time--that we begin to become aware of the deeper significance of the details. The result is that, for many symbolic poems, we are not aware at the beginning or during the early parts of the poem that it is symbolic or should be read symbolically, and inattentive readers often miss the symbolic level of such poems altogether, seeing nothing but the literal level and missing the importance of those details which should point the reader beyond the strictly literal. However, there is one particular situation when the reader becomes aware of the symbolic nature of a poem early almost from the beginning. To examine this alternative situation, let's turn to Wallace Stevens' "Anecdote of the Jar":

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

As before, let's look first at the strictly literal level. The speaker places a jar on a hill in Tennessee; in turn, the presence of the jar causes the wilderness to grow up around the hill and to lose its "wildness." That's simple enough, of course, except for one problem: What's described could never literally happen. A jar could not cause the wilderness to grow or to lose its wildness. What Stevens has done is to describe a literal action that is impossible in order to make clear to the reader that the poem is not to be read literally, and he's done so right at the beginning of the poem, in the first four lines. The reader, then, is to understand right from the beginning that the poem is to be read symbolically and is to focus on the details in order to understand the symbolism of the poem. This technique, although less common than that used by Frost and MacLeish of gradually introducing the idea that a poem is symbolic, can be equally effective, especially in relatively short poems such as this one.

In all other respects, "Anecdote of the Jar" works exactly like the other poems we've examined. What we have are two objects--the jar and the wilderness--and the poem gives us focused descriptions of each as well as a statement about their interrelationship. The jar is symmetrical in shape in contrast to the wilderness which is "slovenly," and, unlike the wilderness, the jar is not alive. So what does each represent? The most significant point about the jar is that it is a human creation: it is a consciously-created artifact that was deliberately shaped for a specific purpose. The wilderness, however, is disordered and lacking in purpose or direction, but simply grows randomly until it encounters the jar which then imposes order, purpose, and direction on it. The wilderness represents Nature while the jar represents the productions of the human mind and of human creativity. For Stevens, as for many writers in the early 20th century, Nature is not the benevolent "Mother Nature" of the 19th century (and previous centuries) because Nature neither is guided by some deity nor itself in any way conscious or purposive. Nature just exists, blindly and meaninglessly. Meaning and purpose are, for Stevens, purely human creations and are those attributes which distinguish man from Nature. Human creations, unlike those of Nature, aren't alive themselves as the creations of Nature are, but human creations--ideas, beliefs, religions, science--have purpose and direction and can impart those qualities to Nature itself, at least in terms of man's ability to exert some degree of control over Nature and to direct its purposeless actions (at least to some extent). Basically, Stevens is rejecting the kind of belief about Nature that Wordsworth and the other Romantics shared, that Nature was the way God revealed Himself to man. Where Wordsworth believed that in Nature

. . . I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And round ocean and the living air,

And blue sky, and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things. . . ,

Stevens asserts that the only presence in Nature is of the ideas man himself has created. The placing of the jar on the hill is the human act of will by which man asserts both his difference from nature (man can possess purpose and direction) and his control over Nature by imposing his own ideas about Nature onto Nature. (NOTE: Stevens develops these ideas in other of his pieces, particularly "The Idea of Order at Key West" which provides a particularly striking example of his belief in the lines:

. . . tell me, if you know,

Why, when the singing ended and we turned

Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,

The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,

As the night descended, tilting in the air,

Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,

Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,

Arranging, deepening, enchanting night. . . ,

Because in these lines, in a technique resembling the "morphing" possible today in computer-animated special effects but not at all at the time Stevens was writing, the strings of light on the darkened fishing boats change into a globe of the Earth with the lines of longitude and latitude--the human creations that bring order and direction to the Earth's surface--marked out in glowing light.)

So, despite an initial difference in that Stevens creates a literal situation that can't possibly happen, he's still doing the same kind of thing as Frost and MacLeish by taking actual things and, through the way he develops them and what he associates with them, invests them with meaning that reaches beyond the strictly literal. (Another poem that does the same kind of thing as Stevens does in this poem with a strictly impossible literal level is William Blake's "The Sick Rose".)

Whichever method the poet chooses, the use of symbolism is a powerful tool and one which requires careful control and unswerving attention to detail throughout the entire poem by the poet--and also on the part of the reader.

__________________

"Poetry is not a code to be broken but a way of seeing with the eyes shut." -- Linda Pastan

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Nothing Gold Can Stay. Collection – New Hampshire. 1923

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

In Frost’s own words: ‘I am not a Nature poet.’ Most of his poems begin with an observation of Nature. He uses Nature as a metaphor to write about human concerns, thoughts and feelings.

In Nothing Gold Can Stay, he talks of the ephemeral nature of things that makes them precious. The desire of human beings to hold on to things that are momentary or short lived – a vibrant rainbow, a pink sunset, or the pale green (almost yellow) of the fresh leaves – is central to the understanding of this poem.

Symbolism

The very first leaves in Spring are almost gold in color – but do not stay that way for long. Then the leaf turns into a flower that too does not last. The plant perishes. The joys of Eden did not last for the dwellers. Every new day comes to a close. Only change and end is inevitable.

This is also a symbol for life. ‘Nature’s first green’ or gold (the purest) is symbolic of childhood which we cannot hold on to and it quickly vanishes. ‘Early leaf’s flower’ tells us that soon childhood flowers into youth. But youth too does not last. Eden, symbolic of adulthood, leads to old age and the sunset stands for death.

Theme

Precious things and precious moments are short-lived. They are precious because they are short lived. Nothing that is precious can stay on forever. So while we must appreciate things and times while they last and we must also understand that they must end. We must learn to let go. Elsewhere, in Reluctance, he has depicted this struggle of man:

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

To me, this also has an association with Maya in Hinduism. Maya means illusion – something that cannot be possessed, the Hindu term for this material world. Maya represents the human dilemma of being caught up in the illusion of the material world, and failing to recognize the actual unity of atman (the individual) with Brahman (the universal ‘All’). Maya is the illusion in which our everyday consciousness becomes entangled and we must be seen through it in order to achieve moksha (liberation of the soul from the cycle of death and rebirth).

Color connotation

Gold across cultures is a symbol of purity (hence the saying – ‘heart of gold’). So the association with ‘first green’, ‘early leaf’, ‘Eden’ and ‘dawn’.

Came across this joke on the web.

A rich man was near death, and became very upset because he had worked so hard for his money and he wanted to take it with him to heaven. So he began to pray that he might be able to take some of his wealth along. An angel heard his plea and appeared to him.

“Sorry,” the angel said, “but you can’t take your wealth with you.” The man implored the angel to speak to God to see if He might bend the rules. The man continued to pray that his wealth could follow him.

The angel reappeared and informed the man that God had decided to allow him to take one suitcase with him. Overjoyed, the man got his largest suitcase, filled it with pure gold bars and placed it beside his bed. Soon afterward the man died and showed up at the gates of heaven to greet St. Peter.

St. Peter, seeing the suitcase, said, “Hold on, you can’t bring that in here!” The man explained to St. Peter that he had permission and told him to verify his story with God.

St. Peter checked and came back saying, “You’re right. You are allowed one carry-on bag, but I’m supposed to check its contents before letting it through.” He opened the suitcase to inspect the worldly items that the man found too precious to leave behind and exclaimed, “You brought pavement?”

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Symbol

By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide

Definition:

A person, place, action, word, or thing that (by association, resemblance, or convention) represents something other than itself. Verb: symbolize. Adjective: symbolic.

Etymology:

From the Greek, "token for identification"

Examples and Observations:

Batman as a Symbol

Bruce Wayne: People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy, and I can't do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man I'm flesh and blood. I can be ignored, I can be destroyed, but as a symbol, as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting.

Alfred Pennyworth: What symbol?

Bruce Wayne: Something elemental, something terrifying.

Alfred Pennyworth: I assume that as you're taking on the underworld, this symbol is a persona to protect those you care about from reprisals.

Bruce Wayne: You thinking about Rachel?

Alfred Pennyworth: Actually, sir, I was thinking of myself.

(Christian Bale and Michael Caine in Batman Begins, 2005)

Women's Works as Symbolic

"The works of women are symbolical.

We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,

Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,

To put on when you're weary."

(Elizabeth Barret Browning, Aurora Leigh, 1857)

Literary Symbols: Robert 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,

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, "The Road Not Taken." Mountain Interval, 1920)

"In the Frost poem, . . . the wood and the roads are symbols; the situation is symbolic. The successive details of the poem and its total form point to a symbolic interpretation. Particular clues are the ambiguous reference of the word 'way,' the great weight that the final phrase, 'And that has made all the difference,' attaches to the action, and the very conventionality of the symbolism involved (that of life as a journey). The roads are 'paths of life' and stand for choices to be made with reference to the 'course' of the traveler's life; the woods are life itself, and so on. Read this way, each description or comment in the poem refers both to the physical event and to the concepts that it is meant to symbolize.

"I define a literary symbol as the depiction through language of an object or set of objects that stands for a concept, an emotion, or a complex of emotion and thought. The symbol provides tangible form for something that is conceptual and/or emotional and, therefore, intangible."

(Suzanne Juhasz, Metaphor and the Poetry of Williams, Pound, and Stevens. Associate University Presses, 1974)

"Which kind of laugh are we to turn on when we see that the speaker has falsified the record, pretending in his old age that he took the road less traveled, despite the fact that earlier in the poem we learn that 'both [roads] that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black'? . . . If we hear the final statement as heartfelt, absent a moralizing strain, we probably regard the speaker with some sympathy, as symbolic of the human propensity to construct fictions to justify choices made in cloudy circumstances."

(Tyler Hoffman, "The Sense of Sound and the Sound of Sense." Robert Frost, ed. by Harold Bloom. Chelsea House, 2003)

"[C]onventional metaphors can still be used in creative ways, as illustrated by Robert Frost's poem, 'The Road Not Taken.' . . . According to Lakoff and Turner, comprehension of [the final three lines] depends on our implicit knowledge of the metaphor that life is a journey. This knowledge includes understanding several interrelated correspondences (e.g., person is a traveler, purposes are destinations, actions are routes, difficulties in life are impediments to travel, counselors are guides, and progress is the distance traveled)."

(Keith J. Holyoak, "Analogy." The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005)

Symbols, Metaphors, and Images

Det. Nola Falacci: He was killed with a family photo-cube. Interesting metaphor.

Detective Mike Logan: Is that a metaphor or a symbol, Falacci? Guess I'd have to take a Master Class to find out.

(Alicia Witt and Chris Noth in "Seeds." Law & Order: Criminal Intent, 2007)

"Although symbolism works by the power of suggestion, a symbol is not the same as a meaning or a moral. A symbol cannot be an abstraction. Rather, a symbol is the thing that points to the abstraction. In Poe's 'The Raven,' death isn't the symbol; the bird is. In Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, courage isn't the symbol; blood is. Symbols are usually objects, but actions can also work as symbols--thus the term 'symbolic gesture.'

"A symbol means more than itself, but first it means itself. Like a developing image in a photographer's tray, a symbol reveals itself slowly. It's been there all along, waiting to emerge from the story, the poem, the essay--and from the writer herself."

(Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively. Writer's Digest Books, 2000)

Language as a Symbolic System

"Language, written or spoken, is such a symbolism. The mere sound of a word, or its shape on paper, is indifferent. The word is a symbol, and its meaning is constituted by the ideas, images, and emotions, which it raises in the mind of the hearer."

(Alfred North Whitehead, Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect. Barbour-Page Lectures, 1927)

"We live in a world of signs and symbols. Street signs, logos, labels, pictures and words in books, newspapers, magazines and now on our mobiles and computer screens; all these graphic shapes have been designed. They are so commonplace we seldom think of them as a single entity, 'graphic design.' Yet taken as a whole they are central to our modern way of life."

(Patrick Cramsie, The Story of Graphic Design. British Library, 2010)

The Lone Ranger's Symbolic Silver Bullets

John Reid: You forget I told you I had vowed never to shoot to kill. Silver bullets will serve as sort of a symbol. Tonto suggested the idea.

Jim Blaine: A symbol of what?

John Reid: A symbol which means justice by law. I want to become known to all who see the silver bullets that I live and fight to see the eventual defeat and proper punishment by law of every criminal in the West.

Jim Blaine: By criminy, I think you got something there!

(Clayton Moore and Ralph Littlefield in "The Lone Ranger Fights On." The Lone Ranger, 1949)

The Swastika as a Symbol of Hate

"The swastika now shows up so often as a generic symbol of hatred that the Anti-Defamation League, in its annual tally of hate crimes against Jews, will no longer automatically count its appearance as an act of anti-Semitism.

"'The swastika has morphed into a universal symbol of hate,' said Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy organization. 'Today it’s used as an epithet against African-Americans, Hispanics and gays, as well as Jews, because it is a symbol which frightens.'"

(Laurie Goodstein, "Swastika Is Deemed ‘Universal’ Hate Symbol." The New York Times, July 28, 2010)

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Symbolic Overtones in Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"

Written by: M.K.Rukhaya • Edited by: Ronda Roberts

Published Aug 31, 2011 • Related Guides: Poet | Robert Frost

Robert Frost poems are singular for their deceptive simplicity. Though at the surface, they appear to be simple poems on nature, they signify something deeper. This is achieved by deft use of symbolism. "The Road Not Taken” is no exception in this regard.

The Crossroad Symbolic of the Turning Point in Frost's Life

Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” was first published in The Mountain Interval in 1920. The ‘road ‘ has been predominantly used as a symbol for the journey of Life. However, it signifies not only journey but also the destination. The metaphor of the road is used persistently in the poem , and is therefore an extended metaphor. A crossroad functions as an evocative metaphor for a vital decision. The road in question is situated in a wood.

The title implies that Frost gives more significance to the aspect that he had not taken any of the specified roads. The popular perception is that Robert Frost had taken one of these two roads that function as two alternatives. Rather, he traverses the middle path. Frost was always caught between two worlds: that of being a teacher and a poet; between reality and imagination. In the prescribed poem, he ruminates over which vocation to pursue, that of a poet or a teacher. He finally arrives at the decision that one can be a poet and yet teach; one can be a teacher and yet philosophize. Thus, he does not take specifically any one of out the routes, but traverses the middle path.

The greatest evidence for this is Frost himself: poet and teacher. Had he taken any one of the popular roads, the poem would be entitled “The Road Taken” .In “The Road Not Taken”, Robert Frost may also allude to his shuttling between imagination and reality. Here also, he adopts a middle stand. He lives a practical life, yet his imagination manifests itself in his writing.

At the outset he comprehends that he is sorry could not travel both : "And sorry I could not travel both/ And be one traveler.” His first impression is that it is not practical. He first ruminates over traveling on the first road, and then talks of the second road. It is generally conceived that he took this particular(second) road. But he also mentions that the path was worn out due to constant use; and toward the end of the poem he mentions that he took the ‘road less travelled’. It implies that he did not take the second, as that was the one commonly used. He categorically states that he kept the first for another day. Therefore, he eventually took the middle path. Hence, the title “The Road Not Taken.”

What the poet shows through “The Road Not Taken” is that decisions in life cannot be specifically organized into logical alternatives or mathematical units. Sometimes life is beyond logic,categorization and mathematical division. The decision is indeed unique, this is why he states:

“And that has made all the difference.”

Other Symbols in "The Road Not Taken"

The concept of two choices is a thought-provoking one.The model of two choices renders one wrong and the other right. If not, one is considered superior to the other. At another level, one is considered default and natural; the other unnatural and deviant.

Robert Faggen states "This psychological representation of the developmental principle of divergence strikes to the core of Darwinian theory. Species are made and survive when individuals diverge from others in a branching scheme, as the roads diverge for the speaker. The process of selection implies an unretracing process of change through which individual kinds are permanently altered by experience. Though the problem of making a choice at a crossroads is almost a commonplace, the drama of the poem conveys a larger mythology by including evolutionary metaphors and suggesting the passage of eons."

The image of woods signifies ‘indecision’ as the poet is lost in the same searching for answers.The image of 'woods' has stood for indecision in Frost's other poems too. A few instances are "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening","Birches" and "Mowing." The image of 'woods' also stands for instinct as opposed to civilization. The poet may be in quest of his instinct in such a situation to arrive at a final decision.The yellow color of the woods points to the season of autumn. Autumn is symbolic of incipient decay and stagnation. The poet also experiences a sense of stagnation as he cannot progress forward to make a decision.

The road that is caught in the undergrowth indicates the road entangled with obstacles. This is the first road , therefore people took the second one as it was easier to traverse."The second path is grassy and wanted wear": The poet implies that it needed to be pruned. The ones who passed by that route had worn it out further. What Robert Frost implies here is that the practice of teaching had been made crude by teachers themselves; they did not attend to the profession out of love for the vocation and sincerity in fulfilling their duties. The path was taken just for the sake of it. The ends was the means, in such a stance. According to the poet, sometimes the journey itself is the destination.

The phrase "Somewhere ages and ages hence" signifies that many years from now the whole experience will come across as a fairytale experience, as it will be complex to digest.The words also point out it to be a future anecdote to recite to generations to come. In such a case,it would function as an example. The relevance of the situation, in spite of time and space separating the two experiences, points to its universality.

"And looked down one as far as I could: implies that his looking at the road was not merely superficial. There is a lot of insight and contemplation involved in his decision, as echoed by the word ’far’. The words "Way leads on to way” symbolizes the poet's bewilderment, how he is caught in a maze with regards to decision–making. And finally, the image of a forked road also evocatively signifies the image of one keeping his fingers crossed; that is, the poet hopes for a positive outcome.

The poem thus reveals a major turning point in the life of Robert Frost.It ends on a note of satisfaction,with a sigh. Frost maintains that his decision based on Self-reliance has made all the difference (in his life).The traveller in the poem is, therefore, Frost himself.The journey is the journey of life. Frost himself warned "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem – very tricky."

References

http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html

Faggen Robert . Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997.

Lawrance Thompson, ed. Selected Letters of Robert Frost. New York: Hold, Rinehart and Winston. p. xv.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/96504228/resource/

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The Road Not Taken!!, June 03, 2008

Reviewer: yEaD

I found this very useful, i hope someone else does too.

The poem describes the act of making choices within one’s life is solely responsible for the outcomes one produces. Frost speaks of the decisions one encounters as they journey through life and how at several points, one would come to a “fork” where the individual would have to decide which road (or decision) is best for them. At such points, Frost goes further to describe how one would contemplate whether or not the individual would like to take the road that has been traveled more or embark upon their own path. Because life is full of forks and divisions, it is not possible that one can choose one way and decide to turn back for the other. In essence that a life-changing decision is “life-changing,” it is all the same impossible to turn back and take the other road.

“The Road Not Taken” possesses a solemn tone.

The poem speaks very much about the decisions one must make should they continue through their life. Frost explains how “two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” and the speaker “taking the other” after “long [he] stood” has “made all the difference.” He acknowledges that the choices he has made and will make will greatly affect his future; therefore it is not a matter to be taken lightly, thus explaining his solemnity in the matter. The speaker realizes that both roads were “equally laying” “just as fair,” which makes them “really about the same.” The fact that there was not a significant difference between the two roads makes it difficult for the speaker to choose which road he would like to take. He understands that the choice is critical and does not treat life like a game, to be jokingly selected. He therefore “looked down as far as [he] could to where it bent in the undergrowth” to figuratively examine how one decision would affect his life. It is reasonable how the speaker would adopt such a solemnity while making such a decision as he would hope to make the best decision and not have any regrets. In the way that a fork in a road symbolizes a decision and a journey symbolizes a quest, the speaker is seeking to continue his life and gain self-knowledge. To the speaker, his pursuit is important, and that supports his taking on of a solemn tone.

Though it is elaborate, the poem’s diction contributes to highly reflective imagery. The act of speaking in past tense for the majority of the poems develops the symbol of passing time. Frost also selects several words such as “yellow wood,” “long,” “just as fair,” “sigh[ing],” “ages and ages” portray that the speaker has been on the earth for quite a bit of time. A “yellow wood” symbolizes autumn: a time when trees loose their leaves, and life gets ready to die away for winter. It is typically accepted that autumn is a time of aging, and one is approaching winter: the time of death. With both the roads having been worn so much that they were “just as fair,” it must have taken rather some time for both to be worn to the same level. Frost goes further to explain how each road was like the other in the morning. “Morning,” when looked upon literally would define a new day, and from that one would connect figuratively that morning signifies a new beginning and thus a passing of time. As time passes, one would grow tired, hence the “sigh.” In the final verse, the speaker refers to the future where he “shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence.” This is after many years of careful contemplation.

The whole idea of passing time demonstrates how the decision-making process goes on for one’s entire life. The “two roads diverging” is just one out of many decisions to be made. On one particular road, however, there was a “bent in the undergrowth.” Figuratively speaking, a bend in a road is an obstacle, and in this case, it was an obstacle in one of the choices in the speaker’s life. When one works around an obstacle, it adds to length; this being a length in time. In many ways, them poem has a time motif, where life is a long and intricate situation to go through. By stating how the roads were “grassy and wanted wear,” the speaker is embarking on a new journey. This embarking is just another decision the speaker must make that will inevitably decide for the outcome of his life. Because none of the leaves on the roads were “trodden black,” he is not taking the road others have taken, but making the way for his own life and being the first to make such a decision. The speaker also knows that “way leads onto way,” so even though the speaker has made a decision to travel one road, the decision-making is continuous, and life does not stop for him to retrace his steps and try the other road. The particular choice he made, however, has made “all the difference,” and that signifies that his contemplation has proven him a dramatic change in his life.

The poem’s language is simple, but the complex syntax connects the punctuation and words to the thesis. Robert Frost wrote this poem in a few different combinations of tertrameter which employs a simple rhyme scheme and the varied effects of these schemes. By writing in such a fashion with the entire poem composed of four sentences, he is able to equate the feeling of many years passing by to the length of the sentences. These sentences are characterized by compound, complex. The very idea of compound and complex sentences is that they are long and elaborate, similar to that of the continuous life-altering decisions made every day. In addition to drawing out the ways how “way leads on to way,” Robert Frosts also inserts punctuation in several places.

Punctuation itself, especially in poetry, can signify a range of things: a period meaning an end of a thought, a comma showing a pausing moment, a semicolon to connect ideas, and a dash to show large contrast. Acknowledging that, Frost tends to place the commas where he is describing the two roads. The commas, like the words making up the compound and complex sentences, force the audience to read his poem with the intended pauses, obviously to indicate the idea that decision-making is not a quick and easy task to do. The semicolons are also used similarly with the commas; however, they provide a contrast of images as well as the lengthening of the sentence, such as that of the road with the “bent in the undergrowth,” and the other that “was grassy and wanted wear.” It is through these commas and semicolons that Robert Frost extended what would be a simpler sentence into a little more than two full stanzas.

There is the one colon and dash where it has “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.” The colon specifies the change between the past and the future when the speaker tells of his past decision and how it will affect him versus the future when he will be looking back at his past and how that has affected him. The dash signifies a pause and provided for the repetition of “I.” The repetition carries a hint of pride and pomposity. Though it may not be a likable quality, the speaker is also stating at the same time that because he decided for himself without the influee of others and embarked upon his own journey, he has emerged successful and “made all the difference.” The fact that his decision was the better one sentimentalizes this particular time and will allow him to go on and make the better choices in his future when he meets up on another road. That is crucial to understanding the concept of “The Road Not Taken.”

Recognizing the value of “The Road Not Taken” can be a difficult thought to let go. Many would always have the urge to head back and travel down the other road instead just to experience what may happen. However, Robert Frost wants readers to realize and accept that life is too full of decisions to retrace every single diversion. He wants readers to be content with the road they have taken and not doubt the other road not taken may be better. To travel every diversion in a road would take more than a lifetime to accomplish, and as long as one is still alive, there will forever be diversions in the roads they take.

If you found this useful-say hello to a random person tomorrow-it will make their day! Editor, please don’t remove these last two lines!

The Road Less Travelled !!, July 12, 2006

Reviewer: kalai

Robert Frost captures the reader with his choice of words. How elegantly he has brought out the dilemma everyone faces in life at one time or another.

"...two roads diverged into one...", February 17, 2006

Reviewer: girijad83 from India

‘The Road Less Traveled’ ,written by Robert Frost, was first published in 1920. As an audio title, it is published by LearnOutLoud and Brian Johnson of Zaadz, Inc. This poem is certainly among my personal favorites. The traveller in the poem comes to a fork in his path, and has to choose between the two. He finally chooses the road that seems less traveled. To me, this poem exhorts the reader to be courageous and to follow the less-beaten track, because that is what makes a difference at the end.

The poem is narrated by Brian Johnson, who is a philosopher and also CEO of Zaadz, Inc. I must say here that he does not at all do justice to this great work. His elocution is highly wanting throughout- the pauses come at the wrong times and there is a certain sing-song characteristic to his rendition. The narration prevents the listener from enjoying the poem. I hope the narrator improves in upcoming titles. In the meanwhile, I would recommend this poem, with only some enthusiasm., to those looking to get a shot of inspiration in a few minutes.

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Thoughts on The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

by Neerav Bhatt on September 4, 2008 · 20 comments in Topic: Favourite Articles

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost is often paraphrased by writers as an appeal to take the road less travelled, an entreaty to the reader to ignore “safe” risk-free options and make a life choice that offers greater risk and greater rewards eg:

“Everyone chooses one of two roads in life – the old and the young, the rich and the poor, men and women alike. One is the broad, well-traveled road to mediocrity, the other the road to greatness and meaning. The range of possibilities that exists within each of these two destinations is as wide as the diversity of gifts and personalities in the human family. But the contrast between the two destinations is as the night is to the day.”

— Dr. Stephen R. Covey, from The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness

Successful business leadership comes from pushing in new directions, not from sticking to convention.

…

Effective leadership development should challenge us to the hilt, by breaking down our preconceptions and confronting us with our inner demons and personal foibles.

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The answer has everything to do with human nature and nothing to do with logic. We like training that reinforces our existing mindsets and prejudices. While most intelligent people love learning, very few like change. So when it comes to leadership training, people want to learn models and skills that reinforce what they already presume to be true.

- Take the road less travelled by Margot Cairnes, from Charter: Oct 2001 issue

Neerav Bhatt’s footprints on a bush track in the Central Australian Desert region

Professor Ron McCallum reached the pinnacle of law and academia in Australia despite being born totally blind.

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“Being disabled made me realise that there is more than one road in life, and that the justice system should look after individuals, especially those who can’t always speak for themselves [he said].

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“That’s why I am concerned about workers with less bargaining power, about we disabled, about indigenous Australians, about refugees [he said]”

- A road less travelled to the top, smh.com.au June 12 2006

“There were summers past that I wish never came, and a great heap that are kept alive in my memory..”

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“Recently, though, quite a few summers have made marks in my book. Now thanks to my travel companion Alan Osbucan who’s passion for photography made him a sunset chaser, I realized that to enjoy the merry months of angry sun means one has to thread the path least taken.”

…

“It’s a wonder how a 3-day break can be life-altering: you begin to appreciate simple joys like clean air, cheap food, and mundane stories. Every thing becomes beautiful, even boys jumping into the sea can be a heart-up. You start to embrace hope, as well — that when these boys grow up they would also have a terrific summer like what you and I just had: a summer that brought out the best in us despite no expectations, one that has taught us that the road less travelled was worth taking.”

-A Postscript to Summer, Manila Bulletin Sun May 28, 2006.

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.

Robert Lee Frost (1874 – 1963) is, in the estimation of many, the greatest American poet of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets writing in English in the 20th century. Frost won a Pulitzer Prize in 1924, 1931, 1937, and 1943. His works explore the relationships between individuals and between people and nature. “The Road Not Taken” first appeared in his collection ‘Mountain Interval’ in 1916.

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