The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost · 1915; collected 1916

Catalog grade guidance: 6–12

20 content lines · 144 words · Est. recitation about 1 min 22 sec (approx.)

Public-domain text for reading and recitation practice. Source: Project Gutenberg #29345: Robert Frost, Mountain Interval (New York: Henry Holt, 1916).Estimated time uses ~120 words/minute plus short pauses—not a contest rule.

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.