![]() ![]() ![]() Written for the Sitwells’ anthology Wheels in summer 1918, ‘The Roads Also’ begins with the statement ‘The roads also have their wistful rest’, with Owen going on to reflect on the way the many lost lives in the war have impacted upon people back home. When the weathercocks perch still and roost, The shadow of the First World War (Thomas enlisted in 1915) can be seen in this poem, with its reference to ‘all roads’ now leading ‘to France’. So begins this paean to roads by one of the great English poets of the early twentieth century. No list of great road poems could be without this. Yet this isn’t quite true: both possible roads were equal, and Frost’s speaker admits that the idea that he chose to tread a less popular path is a bit of retrospective mythmaking. Is this the most misinterpreted poem of the twentieth century? Frost’s speaker recalls how he came to a fork in the road and opted to pursue ‘the one less travelled by’. The poem celebrates having a few drinks and then merrily staggering home as almost a national pastime: ‘Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, / The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.’ ‘A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread’: written in opposition to the prohibition of alcohol, this is one of Chesterton’s most famous poems. The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head … The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.Ī reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,Īnd after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire Ī merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread Chesterton, ‘ The Rolling English Road’.īefore the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, ![]()
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