The Power of Words

For The Fresh Horses Brigade Meme this week, Eden has asked us....

“...If you were invited to a birthday party and the party-thrower had an open mic ready for you to say some of your favourite words, which ones would you choose?....”

I have been thinking about this on our drive to Sydney today and I kept coming back to a poem I studied at highschool.

For me (and many others) senior highschool was challenging and exciting in terms of making life changing decisions against a backdrop of untested independence, idealism, first love, social pressure, alcohol.... I was impressionable and desperately eager to learn.

Words seemed to have so much meaning then!

I have inadvertently memorised this poem. It has been in my brain for 20 years. I love the imagery of autumn and the sense of introspection and thought contained within the beautiful words.

Often, when I am faced with making a decision, be it unconventional, unpopular or even insignificant, the words of this poem fill my head.

...and I image myself ages and ages hence.....

I’ve written the poem down here from memory, so I apologise if I have got some of the words wrong, but this is just how I remember it.....

The Road Less Travelled by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

Wanting to travel both, but be one traveller,

Long I stood and looked down one as far as I could,

until it bent in the undergrowth.

I then took the other as just as fair and wanting perhaps the better claim,

because it was grassy and wanted wear.

But 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

But knowing how way leads onto way, I doubted if I should ever come back.....

I will be saying this with a sigh, 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.