deliberations -- deeply thoughtful, philosophical ponderings -- about traveling through life and encountering troubling decisions, then asking questions vis-a-vis those decisions. Frost's "The Road Not Taken" turns out to be the road that was taken, although the speaker assures the reader that it was a tough decision. And in Rossetti's "Uphill" the speaker is unsure of the future but must keep traveling even though at the end of the journey the light is fading. Both poems embrace the confusion and even uncertainty about the future, and both are reflective of -- and in a real way they mirror -- how life moves along through time and why intelligent, thoughtful people can have fear of the future and can be troubled as to how and why the future will be kind or unkind to the individual.

Speakers

Poem One (Frost): Frost's speaker lets the reader know in the first stanza that...
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