<P> 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 . </P> <P> "The Road Not Taken" is a poem by Robert Frost, published in 1916 as the first poem in the collection Mountain Interval . </P> <P> Frost spent the years 1912 to 1915 in England, where among his acquaintances was the writer Edward Thomas . Thomas and Frost became close friends and took many walks together . After Frost returned to New Hampshire in 1915, he sent Thomas an advance copy of "The Road Not Taken". Thomas took the poem seriously and personally, and it may have been significant in Thomas' decision to enlist in World War I. Thomas was killed two years later in the Battle of Arras . </P> <P> "The Road Not Taken" is a narrative poem . It reads naturally or conversationally, and begins as a kind of photographic depiction of a quiet moment in a woods . It consists of four stanzas of 5 lines each . The first line rhymes with the third and fourth, and the second line rhymes with the fifth (abaab). The meter is basically iambic tetrameter, with each line having four two - syllable feet . Though in almost every line, in different positions, an iamb is replaced with an anapest . The variation of the rhythm gives naturalness, a feeling of thought occurring spontaneously, and it also affects the reader's sense of expectation . In the only line that contains strictly iambs, the more regular rhythm supports the idea of a turning towards an acceptance of a kind of reality: "Though as for that the passing there ..." In the final line, the way the rhyme and rhythm work together is significantly different, and catches the reader off guard . </P>

Who wrote the poem the road less traveled