Don't we all want to be off the beaten path these days? Somewhere not known by others. Wouldn't that be "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. That poem seems to be speaking to a desire to be off the beaten track, too. And thinking it may be written later in life as he refers to a yellow wood of autumn:
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.
Or maybe not. He wrote the poem at age 44 and died at 88. At the half-point.
He died in 1963, before John F. Kennedy himself died - at age 46 in November that year. John F. Kennedy led the tribe for Frost's funeral. At Kennedy's inauguration, Frost had read one of his poems as part of the ceremony. This scene was described in a New York Times article from 1963:
"Invited to write a poem for the occasion, he rose to read it. But the blur of the sun and the edge of the wind hampered him; his brief plight was so moving that a photograph of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson watching him won a prize because of the deep apprehension in their faces.
But Frost was not daunted. Aware of the problem, he simple put aside the new poem and recited from memory an old favorite, "The Gift Outright," dating to the nineteen-thirties. It fit the circumstances as snugly as a glove.
Later he took the unread "new" poem, which had been called "The Preface," expanded it from 42 to 77 lines; retitled it "For John F. Kennedy: His Inaugural" -- and presented it to the President in March, 1962."
I can't find the photo referred to. The retrievals don't seem to respond. But I came upon the Life article with pictures of the inauguration. My goodness, that was Camelot! Here it is.
Here are our beaten paths - the Echinacea wWalk in the Rose Garden at the Royal Botanical Gardens. The second is the Jordan valley path up to Cave Springs in the winter.
Here are our beaten paths - the Echinacea wWalk in the Rose Garden at the Royal Botanical Gardens. The second is the Jordan valley path up to Cave Springs in the winter.
