on poetry, and kings

I love teaching a Humanities block (one period reading, one language arts, and one social studies). It's always fun to blend the subjects, and the social studies curriculum really gives me a lot of interesting topics to add to our Writer's Workshop. Of course, it never gets better than a day when you get to cover King George III and The Road Not Taken with a recording of Frost reading his poem.

I love it. And just to spread the love, here's "the road" (as we have begun calling it in class)

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

The Road Not Taken
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.