The Road not Taken is a poem about choice. It begins, “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;” Clearly the speaker is faced with a decision. He is out for a morning walk in the autumn woods when he comes to a fork in the road. He stops and contemplates which road to take, looking down one road as far as he can see.
The second stanza reads, “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,” The speaker thinks long and hard about which road is the right one for him to take; expressing his indecisiveness and the importance of making the right choice for himself. He decides to take the road that looked as if it had been less traveled but, upon further evaluation he realizes that both roads are “about the same.”
In the third stanza the speaker continues to speculate the differences between the two roads. He notices that both roads are covered with freshly fallen leaves and look as if they have not been traveled, “And both that morning equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black.” He is sorry he cannot take both roads. Therefore, the speaker claims that he will come back and take the other road another day but, then he comes to the realization that he will never get to experience where the other road leads. He realizes that life sometimes gets busy and that coming back there may not be possible.

Robert Frost uses symbolism in this poem to demonstrate that everyone is a traveler and life is full of choices.