Two roads diverged in a yellow woodAnd sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo 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 thereHad worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally layIn 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 sighSomewhere 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.

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):I sha’n’t be gone long. - You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calfThat’s standing by the mother. It’s so youngIt totters when she licks it with her tongue.I sha’n’t be gone long. - You come too.

As I came to the edge of the woods,Thrush music - hark!Now if it was dusk outside,Inside it was dark.

Too dark in the woods for a birdBy sleight of wingTo better its perch for the night,Though it still could sing.

The last of the light of the sunThat had died in the westStill lived for one song moreIn a thrush’s breast.

Far in the pillared darkThrush music went -Almost like a call to come inTo the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for stars;I would not come in.I meant not even if asked,And I hadn’t been.

‘When I was just as far as I could walkFrom here today,There was an hourAll stillWhen leaning with my head against a flowerI heard you talk.Don’t say I didn’t, for I heard you say -You spoke from that flower on the window sill -Do you remember what it was you said?’

‘First tell me what it was you thought you heard.’

‘Having found the flower and driven a bee away,I leaned my head,And holding by the stalk,I listened and I thought I caught the word -What was it? Did you call me by my name?Or did you say -Someone said “Come” - I heard it as I bowed.’

‘I may have thought as much, but not aloud.’

‘Well, so I came.’

A neighbor of mine in the villageLikes to tell how one springWhen she was a girl on the farm, she didA childlike thing.

One day she asked her fatherTo give her a garden plotTo plant and tend and reap herself,And he said, ‘Why not?’

In casting about for a cornerHe thought of an idle bitOf walled-off ground where a shop had stood,And he said, ‘Just it.’

And he said, ‘That ought to make youAn ideal one-girl farm,And give you a chance to put some strengthOn your slim-jim arm.’

It was not enough of a garden,Her father said, to plow;So she had to work it all by hand,But she don’t mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrowAlong a stretch of road;But she always ran away and leftHer not-nice load,

And hid from anyone passing.And then she begged the seed.She says she thinks she planted oneOf all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,Radishes, lettuce, peas,Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, cornAnd even fruit trees.

And yes, she has long mistrustedThat a cider apple treeIn bearing there today is hers,Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellanyWhen all was said and done,A little bit of everything,A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the villageHow village things go,Just when it seems to come in right,She says, ‘I know!

‘It’s as when I was a farmer - ’Oh, never by way of advice!And she never sins by telling the taleTo the same person twice.

Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound’s the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.

O Star (the fairest one in sight),We grant your loftiness the rightTo some obscurity of cloud -It will not do to say of night,Since dark is what brings out your light.Some mystery becomes the proud.But to be wholly taciturnIn your reserve is not allowed.Say something to us we can learnBy heart and when alone repeat.Say something! And it says, ‘I burn.’But say with what degree of heat.Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.Use language we can comprehend.Tell us what elements you blend.It gives us strangely little aid,But it does tell something in the end.And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,Not even stooping from its sphere,It asks a little of us here.It asks of us a certain height,So when at times the mob is swayedTo carry praise or blame too far,We may choose something like a starTo stay our minds on and be staid.