[5] "The Road Not Taken" reads conversationally, beginning as a kind of photographic depiction of a quiet moment in yellow woods (imagery).

The variation of its rhythm gives naturalness, a feeling of thought occurring spontaneously, affecting the reader's sense of expectation.

The two roads are interchangeable.Orr concluded by noting: "It is a poem about the necessity of choosing that somehow, like its author, never makes a choice itself—that instead repeatedly returns us to the same enigmatic, leaf-shadowed crossroads.

[11] A New York Times book review on Brian Hall's 2008 biography Fall of Frost states: "Whichever way they go, they're sure to miss something good on the other path.

[14][15] Thompson suggests that the poem's narrator is "one who habitually wastes energy in regretting any choice made: belatedly but wistfully he sighs over the attractive alternative rejected.

Its signature phrases have become so ubiquitous, so much a part of everything from coffee mugs to refrigerator magnets to graduation speeches...The poem remained very well known well into the 21st century.

[8] Its lines have been quoted in songs by Bruce Hornsby, Melissa Etheridge, George Strait, Talib Kweli, and many others, it's been the title of twelve television series episodes, its lines have been used in about two thousand news stories (1980–2016 alone), and the phrase "The Road Not Taken" appears as a title, subtitle, or chapter heading in more than 400 books on subjects ranging from political theory to a theoretical zombie apocalypse.