MATTHEW SMITH—The Road Not Taken 9.75"x13.75" Illumination

MATTHEW SMITH—The Road Not Taken 9.75"x13.75" Illumination

Gothic style illuminated poem text in gothic textura quadrata hand with yellow-green oak leaf border, a few in gold; illuminated initial inhabited with knapsack character; lesser initials for stanza breaks. If room at the end, some additional knapsack characters/travel iconography.

"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."

—Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"