The Road Not Taken Summary in English by Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken Summary in English

This poem talks about the choices that one has to make in life and their
consequences. One day, while walking in a wooded area full of trees
with yellow leaves, the poet comes to a fork in the road and has to
decide which road he should take. He starts debating over the choice as
he realizes he cannot walk on both. The second road appears to be less
travelled and he is tempted to walk on it even though the first path also
appears to have been left undisturbed for some time. However, he
decides to take the second path with the intention of walking on the first
one sometime in the future.

At the same time he knows that the chances of his returning that way are
slim, especially as he is aware of the manner in which one path leads on
to the other, taking the traveler far away from the main path. In the last
stanza, the poet becomes philosophical when he talks about a future time
when he would look back at the choices that he has made in life and
their consequences. He feels his life will be very different from others
because he has always been tempted to take the path that is not generally
followed by others. It shows the poet as an adventurous man ready to
take risks in life. He does not appear to like following the conventional
path.
The mood of the poem is philosophical and thoughtful as the narrator
wonders whether his choice of the road he decided to travel upon had
been the right one.

The speaker, walking through a forest whose leaves have turned yellow
in autumn, comes to a fork in the road. The speaker, regretting that he or
she is unable to travel by both roads (since he or she is, after all, just one
person), stands at the fork in the road for a long time and tries to see
where one of the paths leads. However, the speaker can't see very far
because the forest is dense and the road is not straight.

The speaker takes the other path, judging it to be just as good a choice as
the first, and supposing that it may even be the better option of the two,
since it is grassy and looks less worn than the other path. Though, now
that the speaker has actually walked on the second road, he or she thinks
that in reality the two roads must have been more or less equally worn-
in.
Reinforcing this statement, the speaker recalls that both roads were
covered in leaves, which had not yet been turned black by foot traffic.
The speaker exclaims that he or she is in fact just saving the first road,
and will travel it at a later date, but then immediately contradicts him or
herself with the acknowledgement that, in life, one road tends to lead
onward to another, so it's therefore unlikely that he or she will ever
actually get a chance to return to that first road.

The speaker imagines him or herself in the distant future, recounting,

with a sigh, the story of making the choice of which road to take.
Speaking as though looking back on his or her life from the future, the
speaker states that he or she was faced with a choice between two roads
and chose to take the road that was less traveled, and the consequences
of that decision have made all the difference in his or her life.
Lines 16-17
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:

 the speaker will still be telling it many years later.

 He'll be telling it with a sigh, though, which is interesting because sighs can be
happy, sad, or merely reflective – and we don't know what kind of sigh this is.
 So, we know that this choice is probably going to be important for the speaker's
future, but we don't know if he's going to be happy about it or not.

Line 18
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

 This line is a repetition of the first line of the poem, with the subtraction of the
word "yellow" and the addition of the words "and I."
 This repetition helps to bring the poem to a conclusion. It reminds us what's
important in the poem – the concept of choosing between two different paths.
 Then, we get the hesitation of "and I" and the dash. This lets us know that
whatever the speaker is about to say next is important.

Line 19
I took the one less traveled by,

 In this line, the speaker sums up his story and tells us that he took the road less
traveled by. With the hesitation in the line before, this declaration could be –
regretful.
 Also, remember it wasn't exactly clear that the road our speaker took was the
one that was less traveled. He said at first that it looked less worn, but then that
the two roads were actually about equal.
  Before you start getting mad at our speaker for stretching the truth, remember
that he's telling his story far in the future, a long time from when it actually
happened. He's predicting that his memory will tell him that he took the road less
traveled by, or that he'll lie in the future, no matter what the reality of the situation
was.

Line 20
And that has made all the difference.

 But he doesn't say that it made him successful – an optimistic reader wants the
line to read positively, but it could be read either way. A "difference" could mean
success, or utter failure.
 Remember, the speaker is telling us about what he's going to say in the future.
From where he is now, just looking down the path as far as he can see, he can't
tell if the future that it leads him to is going to be good or bad. He just knows that
his choice is important – that it will make all the difference in his life.
 The speaker of this poem could be saying that his choice made all the difference