Robert Lee Frost

②The Road Not Taken

This poem is written in classic five-line stanzas, with the rhyme scheme a-b-a-a-b and conversational rhythm. The poet uses \"the road \" to symbolize life's journey.

Stanza 1:The poem begins as if when the poet was walking in a wood in late autumn at a fork in the road. He was choosing which road he should follow. Actually, it is concerned with the

important decisions which one must make in life; one must give up one desirable thing in order to possess the other.

Stanza 2:After the judgment and hesitation, the traveler makes up his mind to take the road which looks grassy and wants wear. This is often beloved to be the symbol of the poet’s choice of a solitary life --- taking poetry writing as his life profession.

Stanza 3:The two roads are equally pretty, so as soon as he made the choice of the one, the poet felt painful for abandoning the other. He is quite aware that his intention of “next choice” will be nothing than an empty promise.

Stanza 4:The poet was imagining many years later when he will be recalling the choice he made today, he would respond with nothing else but a sigh, for it would be too hard for anyone, after many more experiences in life, to make any comment on the choice made early in life.

The poet employed Symbolism(for example, “Yellow” symbolizes hope, “Roads” symbolizes the paths we take in life.), Metaphor(he must decide which road to take just as we must make decisions in life that will greatly impact our destination.),and Antithesis.

③Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

The poem represents a moment of relaxation from the burdensome journey of life, an almost aesthetic enjoyment and appreciation of natural beauty which is wholesome and restorative against the chaotic existence of modern man. Philosophically and symbolically, it stems from the ambiguity of the speaker's choice between safety and the unknown.

The first stanza of the poem provides the basis for the image. It mentions the woods and implies that they are located away from town.

The second stanza provides a more in depth view of the image sketched out in the first. It also provides a more definite time and location. The darkest evening of the year, It can either be taken literally as the most lightless night, or it can be taken as the night of the darkest emotions. The descriptions of the sounds in the third stanza provide a little insight to the speaker's mindset and position.

The final stanza of the poem brings all the sentiments of the poem together, an intense love and awe of nature, a never ending patience and some unknown task or problem that robs the speaker of rest. These final lines represent the problem that has tormented the speaker and that is most likely responsible for his dark mood.

The poem consists of four identically constructed stanzas. Within the four lines of each stanza, the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme. The third line does not, but it sets up the rhymes for the next stanza. For example, in the third stanza, queer, near, and year all rhyme, but lake rhymes with shake, mistake, and flake in the following stanza.

The last stanza shows a kind of sad, sentimental but also strong and responsible feeling. The attraction of the beauty of the nature makes the speaker stop in the journey. He finally turns away from it, with a certain weariness and yet with quiet determination, to face the needs of life. This stresses the central conflict of the poem between man's enjoyment of nature's beauty and his responsibility in society. This shows a man's despairing courage to seek out the meaning of life.

In the last stanza, the three adjectives \"lovely\" \"dark\" \"deep\" reinforce one another. Not only do they represent beauty and terror of nature symbolized by the dark woods, but they also reveal the speaker's love for nature and human isolation from it. Besides, the word \"sleep\" here means \"die\" symbolically.