High School Graduation Poem, The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost is one of my favorite high school graduation poems that shares an important life’s lesson. In Frost’s popular poem, the road is a metaphor for the choices we have in life.

In my own interpretation, I take away from this graduation poem that we need to follow our “gut”, the path  (graduation advice) that we feel is right for us, rather than follow that which seems safe because it has been followed by others. When making our choices, we need to keep in sight who we are and where we want to go.

We all have choices. Our outcome, what lies ahead down our own personal path after graduation, is determined by which choice we make, which path we take…and what we do with those choices. And if we are like Hansel and Gretel, we find ourselves lost, we can plan for a safe turn around. Although they didn’t think their plan through, we have many more resources and supports than they did, lost in the woods.

Popular High School Graduation Poem

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

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;

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,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

What high school graduation poem would you give a high school graduate? Please share…