Happy Birthday, Bobby

It's Robert Frost's birthday. The poet of New England was born on this date in 1876 in (Are you ready for this?) San Francisco. My source says that Frost didn't see a New England state until he was ten.

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.

There are two bits in this poems that I don't think I really picked up on in earlier readings. First, there's the "And be one traveler, ... " line. It never hit me before that Frost was writing about integrity. One can't be one person and take two divergent roads, not just in the physical sense, but in other, deeper, senses as well.

Second, the ambiguity introduced into the last stanza by the introductory "I shall be telling this ... " In other words, he isn't saying now that this choice has made all the difference. Rather, he's saying that he will, at some point in the future, attribute the way his life has turned out to this single choice.

I sometimes think that way about my life. For example, from time to time I look back to my decision to join the Foreign Service, and I might well say with a sigh, "And that has made all the difference." But has it really!

Happy 134th Robert Frost!