Where did that other road lead?

Many have mused about the deeper meaning of Frosts' poem. From Robert Graves' assertion that the other road referred to Frost's "agonized decision" to not enlist in the army, to countless high school valedictorians who see it as a call to live your best life. Humorously, Frost would guffaw at both these interpretations.

In fact, Frost was clear the poem was written as a joke for friend and fellow poet Edward Thomas. Thomas had a penchant for regretting which path they took when him and Frost would take walks through the woods.

After a reading, Frost explained to Thomas that the poem had been, "taken pretty seriously ... despite doing my best to make it obvious by my manner that I was fooling." In another correspondence, Frost writes, "... you failed to see that the sigh [in line 16] was a mock sigh, hypo-critical for the fun of the thing."

So if you ask the poet (which you can't because he's dead), he'll tell you the other road leads to a jest, a jibe, a grandeur. An image of the irony of doubt and lament, and the utter childishness of regret.

If you ask generations of captive readers and writers, they may give you a different answer. They'll tell you the other road leads to individuality, creativity, and success. It leads to a meadow where perhaps we can find happiness and if we're lucky, a bit of freedom.

I'd say they're both right. The other road is a comic illusion that leads to a beautiful, mythical place.

Many readers have wondered about the road that was not taken. Where did it lead? Why is the speaker still wondering where it led and whether he made the right decision when he took the other road? Perhaps the poem is intended to leave the reader wondering about these things, just as the speaker himself is wondering about them. If the answers to the questions were easier to deduce, then the questions would not remain so haunting. Perhaps it was the poet's intention to leave the reader with the image in his mind of that other road extending enticingly "to where it bent in the undergrowth." It seems futile to try to guess where that other road led, since the poet himself could not tell, is still wondering many years later, and expects to be wondering "somewhere ages and ages hence."