Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken

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Robert Frost was a modern poet; he typically used his poems by using nature to describe a type of life event. He goes into depth with his poems using nature metaphors to perhaps make the reader look at life in a different way. The three poems in the following paragraphs that will be used are, “The Road Not Taken,” “Fire and Ice,” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” The poems will be broken down to show how Robert Frost used them with nature and what he truly meant by them. In the poem, “The Road Not Taken” Robert Frost is using two roads to describe how indecisive he is to choose what he wants to do. He says, “And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood” he is apologizing that he cannot travel down both roads at the same …show more content…
Thinking outside of nature fire and ice could be represented by emotions. The hot emotions are more instinctual where you don’t process what has happened you just do whatever in the moment. Where as icy emotions are thinking it through so you can come up with a better response. In the poem it says, “From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.” He has experienced a “hot” emotion so he chooses fire and knows how strong it can be. He continues to say, “But if it had to perish twice,” which means the world ending twice, he’s saying why even worry about the world ending at all? He goes on further to say, “I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great.” He has experienced hate, cold emotions, and he is fully aware that it has the ability to destroy the world. When someone reflects on a hot emotion instead of jumping into rage, his or her response is calmer but more so cold and …show more content…
In the poem it says, “Nature’s first green is gold,” this means the first green in early spring is golden then they turn green as the months pass. He also says, “Her hardest hue to hold.” This is the idea of nature having an issue holding onto something. It goes on to say, “Her early leaf’s a flower;” Frost is using a metaphor here because truly the first flowers of spring are not leaves. In line 5 the poem says, “Then leaf subsides to leaf,” after the leaf is finally no longer a flower it becomes its true leaf form. The word subsides is showing that he thought the first leaf was better and that to become the second leaf the first leaf had to stoop low. On line 6 it says, “So Eden sank to grief,” Eden is referring to the bible the Garden of Eden. Since Eden was devastation in the bible Frost is referring to the golden flowers turning to leaves is sad. In the last line of the poem, “Nothing gold can stay,” which is saying how something gold is pure and beautiful and once the gold flowers turn into green leaves as people who know sin and experience and are not brand new
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