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Speed the plough/don't look back (in anger)

Posted by Lewis on May 20, 2004

In Reply to: Walk the less trodden path posted by ESC on May 20, 2004

: : : Hello,

: : : what is the meaning of walking the less trodden path?

: : Robert Frost wrote one of my favourite poems about this...
: : : 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.

: According to one analysis "The inspiration for it (The Road Not Taken) came from Frost's amusement over a familiar mannerism of his closest friend in England, Edward Thomas. While living in Gloucestershire in 1914, Frost frequently took long walks with Thomas through the countryside. Repeatedly Thomas would choose a route which might enable him to show his American friend a rare plant or a special vista; but it often happened that before the end of such a walk Thomas would regret the choice he had made and would sigh over what he might have shown Frost if they had taken a "better" direction. More than once, on such occasions, the New Englander had teased his Welsh-English friend for those wasted regrets. Disciplined by the austere biblical notion that a man, having put his hand to the plow, should not look back, Frost found something quaintly romantic in sighing over what might have been."

most people on hear have probably heard anyhow, but the reason for not looking back is that twisting the body to look back when ploughing often leads to a wobbly furrow, whereas keeping focused on a point ahead gives a straight furrow.
it is a practicality rather than purely philosophical.