Question

Read these lines from the poem and answer the questions

OR

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 travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

a. What would the speaker tell? Why would he ‘sigh’ while ‘telling this’?

b. Why do you think the poet ends the third line and begins the fourth with ‘I’?

c. Which word in the quoted lines means in the future’?​

Answer 1

a) The poet says that somewhere in the distant future, he'll remember his decision and sigh. He knows he'll regret that he didn't take the other road, and he'll never know how different his life would have been if he had done so.

b) maybe because he wants to refocus readers on the fact that he decided to choose the path that was 'less travelled by', and thereby, by permitting himself to follow a different course has made all the difference

c) 'Somewhere ages and ages hence'