Taken the Beaten Path

Loriann Smalley

HUMN 421, Introduction to Literature

Taking the Beaten Path

The path that is beaten; bare of life

Beaten by a man who has it all

A man who has a kid and a wife

A man whose life has been full of strife

But he kept walking after his fall

Looking at the overgrowth thinking

It looks like no one has travelled here

Feeling as though his feet are sinking

Swearing that he hears the paths speaking

He is fighting to keep his head clear

He could stray this path; this path so bare

Give in to loathing, give in to fear

See the things that really aren't there

Shut-eyed, hoping well is how he'll fare

To his eye, this thought brought him a tear

He won't focus on what path to take

Lifting eyes to where it takes a bend

The bend leads to home where his loves wait

His wife, his kid, it's for both their sakes

Yes this path will stay beaten ‘til end

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 marked 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.

I chose Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken because I like the irony at the end where he predicts that in the future he will be looking back on the present and as he is retelling this tale he will say that the road he took was the one less taken. Although, he actually says that both paths were equally untouched....