Another of Frost's contemplative literary moments illumines "The Road Not Taken," a teasing conundrum written in 1916, when the poet was trying to succeed at farming and publishing. This somewhat stoic poem, characterizing a momentous, life-altering resolution, profits from the poet's blend of delight and wisdom. The speaker recalls once choosing one of two forks in a road through the woods. Settling for the less-worn fork, the traveler notes, with some regret, that normal momentum would cause him to press ahead, thus negating a return trip to try the other path.
The poem stops shy of dramatizing the speaker's choice of which road to take. Frost deliberately hedges on the speaker's emotion by whittling down differences in the two roads with "just as fair," "perhaps," and "about the same." Anticipating nostalgia over missed chances, the speaker acknowledges that the morning's decision "has made all the difference" but leaves the reader with no tangible clue to an interpretation, good or bad.
In "Birches," a fanciful monologue, the poem's speaker expresses a Twain-like nostalgia for carefree boyhood and tree-climbing. The 59-line poem triggers a memory — bent trees jog the poet's recall of a boy's mischievous but normal pastime. Indulging in digression, the speaker notes that ice storms have the same effect on birches and that the glass-like shards falling on the ground below suggest the shattering of heaven's crystal dome, a symbol of divine perfection. Restored to the original train of thought after "Truth broke in / With all her matter of fact," the speaker returns to reliving boyhood in the country, where a skilled birch-bender could subdue trees with the same care as a hand requires to fill a cup to the brim without spilling.
