The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Manzoor Ahmad Bhat Department of English Government Degree College Kulgam

Robert Frost: Life and Career Born in San Francisco, California, on March 26, 1874. Died in January, 1963. My Butterfly was published in 1894 in the New York Independent Later published six of his lyrics in a booklet entitled Twilight.

Major Poetry Collections First two volumes: A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston(1914), Eight more volumes: America- Mountain Interval(1916), New Hampshire(1923), West Running Brook(1928), A Further Range(1936), A Witness Tree(1942), Come In and Other Poems(1943),A Masque of Reason(1945) and A Masque of Mercy(1947).

Pastoral Note in Frost’s Poetry Pastoral poetry is a kind of poetry which deals with the life of the humble dwellers in the countryside with their work, their desires and pleasures and with their joys and sorrows. Frost’s treatment of rural life is characterized by down-to-earth realism. Glorification of rural life has been a leading characteristic of the pastoral. He records the habits and various aspects of life and activity, beliefs, ideals, traditions and codes of conduct of New Englanders..

Frost as a Lyricist Frost has many commendable philosophical and narrative poems to his credit, but his genius was essentially lyrical wherein the poet’s mood finds a spontaneous expression. The lyrics are thus subjective and personal More characteristic of him is the Browning type dramatic monologue called dramatic lyric. His lyrics often begin with a simple idea or situation. They are full implications of which are revealed as the lyric develops often by the use of rich and varied symbols.

The Road Not Taken: Introduction The Road Not Taken is one of the most famous lyrics published in Mountain Interval (1916). The poem very finely combines the inner lyric vision and the outer contemplative narration. It is a great lyric which records a personal experience of the poet but from the personal, the poet soon rises to the universal and the general. The conflict in the poem is set at work by the difficulty the poet faces in choosing one of the two roads which diverge at a particular point and the poet comments on the difficulty and significance of making a choice in general. The poet’s experience becomes symbolic of human experience in all ages and countries. The difficulty of making a choice is a universal one, and in this way the lyric is true to universal experience.

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