(1) Frost sends the poem to Thomas, with no clarifying text, in March or April of 1915. The sequence of their correspondence on the poem is a miniature version of the confusion вЂњThe Road Not TakenвЂќ would provoke in millions of subsequent readers: Instead, Thomas sent Frost an admiring note in which it was evident that he had assumed the poemвЂ™s speaker was a version of Frost, and that the final line was meant to be read as generations of high school valedictorians have assumed. In the spring of 1915, Robert Frost sent an envelope to English critic Edward Thomas that contained only one item: a draft of вЂњThe Road Not Taken,вЂќ under the title вЂњTwo Roads.вЂќ According to Frost biographer Lawrance Thompson, Frost had been inspired to write the poem by ThomasвЂ™s habit of regretting whatever path the pair took during their long walks in the countryside-an impulse that Frost equated with the romantic predisposition for вЂњcrying over what might have been.вЂќ Frost, Thompson writes, believed that his friend вЂњwould take the poem as a gentle joke and would protest, вЂStop teasing me.вЂ™вЂќ

вЂњ The Road Not TakenвЂќ has confused audiences literally from the beginning. Forward, you understand, and in the dark. Ever since infancy I have had the habit of leaving my blocks carts chairs and such like ordinaries where people would be pretty sure to fall forward over them in the dark. My poems-I should suppose everybodyвЂ™s poems-are all set to trip the reader head foremost into the boundless.

The poem road not taken summary