In early April 1915, Robert Frost, an American poet from rural New England, sent his poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ (1916) to his friend and fellow poet the Englishman Edward Thomas. Frost wrote the poem whilst living in England and described the poem as a ‘gentle joke’ at the expense of his friend’s indecisive nature.1The poem begins with the speaker contemplating a choice between two roads in a ‘yellow wood’.2 Confronted with the impossibility of taking both paths (‘sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveller’), the speaker searches for signs to help with their decision (‘long I stood / And looked down one as far as I could’). They veer towards the one that was ‘grassy and wanted wear’, however, indecision creeps in as the speaker muses that both roads ‘that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.’The poem ends with the lines: ‘I — / I took the one less travelled by, / And that has made all the difference.’ The momentary hesitation here, represented by the repetition of ‘I’, acknowledges the self-realisation that comes with a lie. The traveller was helpless and indecisive in deciding between the two roads, but nevertheless courageously embraces their choice as intentional and meaningful. Frost was one of a few other poets who had been influenced by pragmatism, a philosophical approach developed by American philosopher William James (1842–1910), among others. Frost had hopes of becoming a student of his during his time at Harvard University (1897–99), where James was professor of philosophy, and although this never materialised, they later exchanged correspondence.James conceived pragmatism as a method that mediates between the strict minded with their ‘scientific loyalty to facts’ versus those inclined towards the ‘old confidence in human values’, an idealised view that prefers spontaneity. James’s pragmatic method resolves these extremes through empiricism — not in the sense of scientific experimentation but rather by unravelling the practical consequences of each view.3 He provides the example of a man continuously walking round a tree to view a squirrel that resolutely stays on the opposite (hidden) side of the tree trunk. During this game of hide and seek, do the man’s actions result in his going round the squirrel’s body? James suggests that the answer depends on the practical consequences of what we desire: for what purpose do we seek this truth? If we wish going round to mean going round the squirrel’s back, then the answer is ‘no’; however, if going round means along its side, head-to-tail, perhaps so. In his essay Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth (1907) James argued that a true idea is never static, or an end to itself, rather it relies on an individual’s capacity to realise it into existence. James saw the pursuit of truth as a personal process dependent on an individual’s will, writing ‘Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.’4 The truth of the squirrel and the tree trunk is similarly not static but made true by the truth-seeker’s will.According to James, truth is found through the course of experience, but in Frost’s poem the speaker is seeking to believe something about each path before having experienced either. James warns against holding beliefs that do not align with lived experiences,5 and so to help with the decision the speaker attempts an empirical evaluation: ‘And looked down one as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth’. The speaker’s eventual decision to frame their choice as the road ‘less travelled by’ focuses on the pragmatic lesson embedded in the poem: the truth (of the best road to take) is a subjective judgement deriving from the individual’s innermost needs.The fork in the road required a leap of faith, and it was the speaker’s decision to take that leap that ‘made all the difference’.6 The speaker’s action was the necessary precursor to the truth — the truth here being the goal of achieving a life well lived through the simple belief in the utility of one’s choices. Frost would go on to write in his prose, ‘...the most creative thing in us is to believe a thing in, in love, in all else’.7Back in England, Frost’s friend Edward Thomas had enlisted in the 21st Special Air Service Regiment (later known as the Artists Rifles) to fight in WWI. This was in July the same year as Frost’s correspondence, and since then many have speculated the role the poem played in his decision to join the war effort — his leap of faith. On Easter Monday, 9 April 1917 Thomas was killed in Arras, France by a bullet through the chest.In Frost’s final years he embraced the poem as a homage to his life as a poet. On the day of his last poetry reading at the age of 88 in 1963, he closed the event with the poem and received a standing ovation from a Boston audience, a few weeks before his death.