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.

자 그럼 시작해 볼까요?

Summary

The speaker stands in the woods, considering a fork in the road. Both ways are equally worn and equally overlaid with un-trodden leaves. The speaker chooses one, telling himself that he will take the other another day. Yet he knows it is unlikely that he will have the opportunity to do so. And he admits that someday in the future he will recreate the scene with a slight twist: He will claim that he took the less-traveled road.

숲속에서 서있는 화자는 길의 갈림길에서 고민을 합니다.

두 길은 비슷하게 풀이 자라 있고 비슷하게 낙옆이 쌓여 있습니다.

화자는 하나의 길을 선택합니다. 그리고는 다음에 다른길을 가리라 마음먹습니다.

그러나 그는 다른길을 걸을 기회는 없을것이란걸 알고 있죠.

화자는 미래의 어느때인가는 이 장면을 기억하며 스스로의 판단을 내릴것이라

인정합니다: 다른길보다 적게 다녔던 길로 갔다라며.

Form

“The Road Not Taken” consists of four stanzas of five lines. The rhyme scheme is ABAAB; the rhymes are strict and masculine, with the notable exception of the last line (we do not usually stress the -ence ofdifference). There are four stressed syllables per line, varying on an iambic tetrameter base.

stanza: 산문에서의 단락과 같은 시의 단락

iambic: 시의 운율이 약강격[단장격]의(약한[짧은] 음절 하나에 강한[긴] 음절 하나가 따라 나오는 형태)

tetrameter: (운율) 4보격(四步格)(의 시) ((4시각(詩脚)의 시행))

iambic tetrameter: A poetic meter consisting of a line with four feet in each of which the iamb is dominant.

약하게 강하게 또는 짧게 길게 읽는 부분이 4개가 모여있다는 이야기 입니다.

Commentary

This has got to be among the best-known, most-often-misunderstood poems on the planet. Several generations of careless readers have turned it into a piece of Hallmark happy-graduation-son, seize-the-future puffery. Cursed with a perfect marriage of form and content, arresting phrase wrought from simple words, and resonant metaphor, it seems as if “The Road Not Taken” gets memorized without really being read. For this it has died the cliché’s un-death of trivial immortality.

너무나 읽기쉽고 운율이 완벽해서 제대로 뜻을 알지 않고도 기억할 수 있다는

덕분으로 가장 잘 알려져 있으면서도 가장 잘못 이해되고 있는 시라는 군요.

But you yourself can resurrect it from zombie-hood by reading it—not with imagination, even, but simply with accuracy. Of the two roads the speaker says “the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.” In fact, both roads “that morning lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.” Meaning: Neither of the roads is less traveled by. These are the facts; we cannot justifiably ignore the reverberations they send through the easy aphorisms of the last two stanzas.

정확하게 의미를 이해해서 이러한 좀비상태에서 부활시킬 수 있을 겁니다.

화자는 "그길을 가므로써 아마도 같은 정도로 닳을 것이다" 라고 말하지만

사실은 두개의 길이 동일하게 닳아 있고 아무도 밟지않은 나뭇잎들이 쌓여

있다라고 합니다. 결국 어느 한 길이 적게 여행된것은 아니라는 것이죠.

마지막 두 단락의 경구들을 통한 반향을 정당하게 무시할 수는 없다네요(어렵다..)

One of the attractions of the poem is its archetypal dilemma, one that we instantly recognize because each of us encounters it innumerable times, both literally and figuratively. Paths in the woods and forks in roads are ancient and deep-seated metaphors for the lifeline, its crises and decisions. Identical forks, in particular, symbolize for us the nexus of free will and fate: We are free to choose, but we do not really know beforehand what we are choosing between. Our route is, thus, determined by an accretion of choice and chance, and it is impossible to separate the two.

인생의 전형적인 딜레마가 이시의 가장큰 매력중 하나입니다.

갈림길은 운명과 자유의지가 결합되어 있는 것을 상징합니다.

우리는 자유롭게 선택할 수 있을지 몰라도 그 결과는 알 수 없는 것이죠.

기회와 선택은 불가분의 관계이고 우리 삶의 길이죠.

This poem does not advise. It does not say, “When you come to a fork in the road, study the footprints and take the road less traveled by” (or even, as Yogi Berra enigmatically quipped, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it”). Frost’s focus is more complicated. First, there is no less-traveled road in this poem; it isn’t even an option. Next, the poem seems more concerned with the question of how the concrete present (yellow woods, grassy roads covered in fallen leaves) will look from a future vantage point.

이시는 조언을 하는 것이 아닙니다. 

갈림길에 섰을때 적은 여행자들이 걸은 길을 걸으라는 것이 아닙니다. 

우선 더 적게 걸은 길은 없고 이것은 선택사항이 아닙니다.

그리고 현재의 상황이 미래에서 이익을 따졌을때 어떻게 보이는지가

더 관심사입니다.

The ironic tone is inescapable: “I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence.” The speaker anticipates his own future insincerity—his need, later on in life, to rearrange the facts and inject a dose of Lone Ranger into the account. He knows that he will be inaccurate, at best, or hypocritical, at worst, when he holds his life up as an example. In fact, he predicts that his future self will betray this moment of decision as if the betrayal were inevitable. This realization is ironic and poignantly pathetic. But the “sigh” is critical. The speaker will not, in his old age, merely gather the youth about him and say, “Do what I did, kiddies. I stuck to my guns, took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Rather, he may say this, but he will sigh first; for he won’t believe it himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind will remain the image of yellow woods and two equally leafy paths.

아주 머나먼 미래에 한숨을 쉬며 말하는 것은

화자가 자신이 걸었던 그 길에 대해서 왜곡되게 해석할 것이고 감정적으로

받아들일 것이라는 것입니다. 자신이 걸은 그 길이 좋은선택이란걸

알 수 없다는 것이죠.

Ironic as it is, this is also a poem infused with the anticipation of remorse. Its title is not “The Road Less Traveled” but “The Road Not Taken.” Even as he makes a choice (a choice he is forced to make if does not want to stand forever in the woods, one for which he has no real guide or definitive basis for decision-making), the speaker knows that he will second-guess himself somewhere down the line—or at the very least he will wonder at what is irrevocably lost: the impossible, unknowable Other Path. But the nature of the decision is such that there is no Right Path—just the chosen path and the other path. What are sighed for ages and ages hence are not so much the wrong decisions as the moments of decision themselves—moments that, one atop the other, mark the passing of a life. This is the more primal strain of remorse.

Thus, to add a further level of irony, the theme of the poem may, after all, be “seize the day.” But a more nuanced carpe diem, if you please.

이러한 아이러니와 함께 후회의 예감이 섞여 있습니다.

이시의 제목이 "덜 걸은 길" 이 아닌 "가지 않은 길" 이라는 것에서 알 수 있죠.

화자는 그 길을 선택했지만 다른길을 걸었을때 무엇이 달라지는지를 알 수 없고

그 가지 않은 길에 대한 후회들이 마음에 항상 남아 있는 것입니다.

그러나 궁극적으로 올바른 길은 없음을 화자는 알고 있습니다.

또한 한숨을 쉬는 이유는 잘못된 길을 선택했던 것이 아니라 그 선택 자체를 해야

했던 순간들 때문이죠.

이러한 아이러니들을 더해서 이시의 주제는 아마도 그 순간을 잡아라

즉 "carpe diem" 그 순간을 즐겨라 일까 합니다.