Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods / And over the walls I have wended; / I have climbed the hills of view / And looked at the world, and descended; / I have come by the highway home, / And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground, / Save those that the oak is keeping / To ravel them one by one / And let them go scraping and creeping / Out over the crusted snow, / When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still, / No longer blown hither and thither; / The last lone aster is gone; / The flowers of the witch hazel wither; / The heart is still aching to seek, / But the feet question "Whither?"

Ah, when to the heart of man / Was it ever less than a treason / To go with the drift of things, / To yield with a grace to reason, / And bow and accept the end / Of a love or a season?

—

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.