Exhibit Three

One gets, sometimes, rarely, from a student a piece of writing that needs almost no editing. This was one such piece. It just needed touching up. So the entire credit goes to -
Loud applause -
Ahalya Alvares.

A comparison between The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost and Edward Thomas's The Signpost.

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 Signpost by Edward Thomas

The dim sea glints chill. The white sun is shy,
And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry,
Rough, long grasses keep white with frost
At the hill-top by the finger-post;
The smoke of the traveller's-joy is puffed
Over hawthorn berry and hazel tuft.
I read the sign. Which way shall I go?
A voice says: "You would not have doubted so
At twenty." Another voice gentle with scorn
Says: "At twenty you wished you had never been born."
One hazel lost a leaf of gold
From a tuft at the tip, when the first voice told
The other he wished to know what 'twould be
To be sixty by this same post. "You shall see,"
He laughed -and I had to join his laughter -
"You shall see; but either before or after,
Whatever happens, it must befall.
A mouthful of earth to remedy all
Regrets and wishes shall be freely given;
And if there be a flaw in that heaven
'Twill be freedom to wish, and your wish may be
To be here or anywhere talking to me,
No matter what the weather, on earth,
At any age between death and birth, -
To see what day or night can be,
The sun and the frost, tha land and the sea,
Summer, Winter, Autumn, Spring, -
With a poor man of any sort, down to a king,
Standing upright out in the air
Wondering where he shall journey, O where?"

Both “The Signpost” by Edward Thomas and “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost are

fascinating poems with a similar undercurrent or theme running through them.

Both poems talk about life as a journey, and one that is fraught with decisions,

alternatives and choices, but both take a different stand on the impact that these decisions ultimately have on our lives.

The poem “the signpost” starts off with a beautiful description of the background where the poet is walking and it tells us of Thomas’ surroundings, which are bleak and almost lifeless. “The dim sea glints chill” evokes an image of a dull cool mass of water, masking its many mysteries and wonders and simply lying on its bed, comatose.

The phrase “the white sun is shy” also invokes a bleak image as the reader imagines a sun, pale in its whiteness, fixed idly in the middle of the sky, yet trying its best to hide from the world behind the façade of clouds.

“The road not taken” however, does not start with much description, but is more straightforward and simply begins with Frost addressing his theme of life’s decisions in the form of two diverging paths.

Both poems express the poets’ confusion and puzzlement over which path to take in life. In “The Signpost” Thomas says “I read the sign. Which way shall I go?”

And in The Road Not Taken, Frost says “

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood”

However, the similarity ends here as both poets take different stands on these paths of life.

Frost says that both paths look good to him and it would be easy for him to choose either, but he chooses the one less traveled, less trodden upon, although the first road too would have been an equally good experience. This can be seen in the lines “

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear”

Thomas on the other hand takes a different view as he says “I read the sign. Which way shall I go? A voice says: you would not have doubted so at twenty. Another voice gentle with scorn says: At twenty you wished you had never been born.”

Thomas sees the paths as confusing too, but says that no matter which path he takes, he knows he will have some sense of regret, and a sense that the past or future is always better than the path he has taken in the present.

In this way, the poets’ views are almost starkly contrasting. Frost sees the choices life throws at us as a positive experience, one that he cherishes, and he accepts that other paths and decisions are all equal, thereby dismissing the idea of regret at having taken one path and not the other, Thomas, on the other hand, adopts a more melancholy attitude where he says no matter what path you take, the grass will always look much greener on the other side.

The contrast between their views continues as the poems flow on, as Frost goes on to explain that although both paths were attractive and excellent, the decision he made about his life or the path he chose to travel has affected his life profoundly, and intensely in a positive sense, and has changed his destiny completely.

We can see this in the lines “

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

Thomas’ viewpoint differs entirely from this, as it seems he sees life- changing decisions we make almost futile because ultimately they lead to the same outcome. The final and inevitable swipe of the sword slays us all- and that is death. In his own words “whatever happens it must befall”. Thomas speaks with a mood of resigned sadness which borders on emptiness and his joie de vivre is lost in the fact that he sees life as being chock full of regrets and wishes, like those timeless moments where we reflect on our lives and say to ourselves-“What if…” Thomas says in his poem “regrets and wishes shall be freely given”

He even says that no matter what path we tread, we are still essentially fated to the same destiny and will all, no matter how rich, poor, intelligent or ignorant, be affected by the same things such as the seasons, death and birth. This is seen in the lines “No matter what the weather, on earth,
At any age between death and birth, -
To see what day or night can be,
The sun and the frost, the land and the sea,
Summer, Winter, Autumn, Spring, -
With a poor man of any sort, down to a king.”

It is because of this disparity in their very philosophioes of life that both poems, although talking about the same subject, end on two very different notes. Frost ends with an attitude of resolution, understanding of his choices, and gratefulness that he was able to make a decision that so enriched and made up the very essence of his life when he says”

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

Thomas however ends on a confused note, where he is left in the spiraling web of his own negative thoughts and is left questioning the very decisions he made in his own life, which have left him unfulfilled, still searching for the ever-hidden truth he is unable to uncover and we see this in the way he ends his poem, with the stark question “Wondering where he shall journey, O where?” The question mark at the end is a clear indicator of his irresolute take on life.

Comments, if you please?