Name:________________________

Date&Time: ___________________

Directions: Analyze the poems carefully and answer the following

questions written below.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

-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.

1. What does the speaker mean by the lines "Yet knowing how way leads on
to way, I doubted if I should ever come back."?
2. What is the traveler's problem in stanza one?
3. What similarities between the two roads does the traveler point out?
4. Would you have chosen the same path as the speaker? Yes or no?
Explain.
5. "I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." What
is the speaker saying here?
6. What are the themes in this poem?
 INVICTUS

- William Ernest Henley

 
  Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

7. What is the central idea of the poem "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley?
8. “In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.” What
is the speaker saying here?
9. Given the context of the poem, what does the title INVICTUS most likely
mean?
10. Interpret the last stanza in your own terms.