Axis of Logic
Finding Clarity in the 21st Century Mediaplex

Venerable Verse
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
Voice: Exit Films, Melbourne; Choir: San Jose Symphonic Choir
Sunday, Apr 25, 2010

(two videos)

Editor's Note: In the early 1960s, when I was a young seminarian student in a fundamentalist christian university, curriculum requirements included courses in public speaking. In one of those courses, I was required to memorize and present in class, a piece of classical literature. I chose to present a poem, Robert Frost's, The Road Not Taken and I not only read it ... I took it. What guided my decision back then, in my youth ... in my youthful ignorance ... was a whisper that has led to where I happen to be today. I've never regretted it. I do not think that Frost thought that a road should be taken simply because it is less traveled. The real meaning is only available to those who are able to open themselves to his poem and find their own way. - Les Blough


The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To 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 there
Had worn them really about the same,

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.


The Road Not Traveled
A reading from Melbourne
(please try to ignore Ford's
use of this sacred verse)

 

The Road Not Taken by the San Jose Symphonic Choir