Friday 9 March 2012

The Power of Words

Edenland's Fresh Horses Brigade


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.....
Ive 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.

11 comments:

  1. While I never memorised this poem, I do remember reading it and it having a huge effect on me.

    The concept that you probably won't go back and experience everything. That you do have to choose, but sometimes you can backtrack. That it is okay to travel one path.

    The last line still confuses me. *sighs* Poetry is ever a challenge of comprehension for me.

    Great choice!

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    1. Thanks so much! I love the last last line and I like to think that taking the path less travelled has made all the difference to me as well!

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  2. I love that poem.
    It's my reminder that it's okay to forge your own way sometimes.
    :-) x

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    1. Thats a really nice way to look at it...I like it!

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  3. I love Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". In my old life I used to have the last lines repeating though my head when I was up at 3am, pack marching, and it suits me now during the mother-of-young-kids phase, on those days when I'm exhausted and still battling on....

    But my all time favorite is Kipling's "If".

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    1. I really liked 'stopping by woods on a snowing evening' too. Both Frost and Kipling had an amazing way with words and really understood their power!

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  4. I memorised that poem at school, but have since forgotten it. It's good to read it again.

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    1. Thanks Roger!...the poem just seemed to stay in my head!?

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  5. It's a good poem. Makes me feel brave.I love that you have inadvertantly remembered it all these years. - Deb from Bright and Precious

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    1. Thank you Deb! It makes me feel brave as well!

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  6. I absolutely LOVE this poem and studied at school too. Sometimes I hear it, in my head - after all these years. I didn't leaner much at school, am so glad this one stuck.

    Thank you, i hadn't read it in ages!

    xx

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