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.
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.
