The One Less Traveled By

There was a time when I was obsessed with Robert Frost poems. One summer, when I was taking a whole year of organic chemistry (3 full quarters in about 8 weeks -- ugh!), I memorized a half-dozen of his poems. Why? Who knows? Maybe I needed just one more thing to memorize that summer. I rather suspect that memorizing his poems are the only thing that kept me sane. Funny thing, I still remember those poems (mostly), but I don't remember 98.8% of the organic chemistry I had to memorize. This is probably my most favorite poem of his. It is an old and comforting friend.

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.