Frost’s Lost Road

by | Mar 4, 2015 | Literary Echoes | 0 comments

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.
from The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Frost’s Lost Road

It is all down to choice, Mr. Frost; we learned that from you as we learned that from many other people like you who understood that we wouldn’t care much about the part of destiny we cannot control, but the one that is purely our own choice; and by understanding this fact, we can wait no longer for God to show up on the next corner, nor can we blame it all on Him, nor can we lay helpless and curse our fate, which, to a great extent, we have greatly contributed to.

While many felt you were in confusion about which road to take and thought for a moment that you regretted your choice at the end of the journey, Mr. Frost, I can see you were not that person who, after having created a world of his own, regretted that he had contributed another genuine line in this great poem of humanity. Pride filled your path from beginning to end and shame never trespassed the vicinity of your own trodden road, your own discovered path; you know and I know that making it into this new place and actually paving your own path in there was the thing that made all the difference, which we all seek to do in our lives.

Yet forgive me, Mr. Frost, for seeing you a little lonely on this road as if nothing and no one has ever been in your line of sight in your whole journey. If it were the road of humanity, so you were not the only human, and if it were the road of poets, you were not the only one. Which road then was it the one you took and you ventured away from all civilization and all easy paved roads? Where is this place where you soared alone and stood out in the flock? Which opposite direction did you take and why were you not a mere Bohemian taking the way upside the river just to challenge the very being of nature? What have you done to be so alone? And only then I realized that you did not take the opposite direction, nor did you think at any moment that you were alone, the only human or the only poet. You never thought this way; it was I who didn’t see it.

All the roads we have taken and you have taken are like the lines in our fingerprints; diversified in a very unique way, yet belong to the same person; and all the roads we are taking are so unique, so diversified, but belong to the same journey of humanity and the same struggle to find our place in this world, get the message and deliver it, and leaving a mark after we are gone for all the coming generations to remember us, but this road is only unique; we didn’t kill because people only kill to steal other people’s roads as they do not have one on their own; they kill to steal other people’s dreams as they are afraid to dream. This road is so peaceful that there is no room for revenge and hatred; only love can pave the way for others to take after, expand and perhaps discover new land. Taking this unique road is like planting a tree so that your grandchildren can one day eat from. The road is never meant to be followed, but the way you walked the path was meant to tell us something to make up our minds and go on our own ways. Now I understand Mr. Frost where your lost road lies; now I am ready to go.

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