A Prequel and a Sequel to Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"

The year is Eighteen Seventy-Four      
when I was born on a troubled road      
with family deaths and life unsure      
and constant illness, insecure,      
the future weighed as a heavy load.      
      
In a world thus marked, I had a dream      
beyond the farm, I might choose to dare,      
take a poet’s path - that many would deem      
a leap too far from my earthly scene;      
so I took a walk to clear the air …      
       
             
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,  
And sorry I could not travel both  
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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 travelled by,    
And that has made all the difference.    
      
     
       
… But time has passed since I wrote those lines      
at the tender age of forty-one,      
now double those years I see the signs      
of withering doubts that plague my mind,      
knowing the stakes had hardly begun;      
       
so I cannot say of the way I took      
- a dithering choice twixt roads so fair -      
that one was true, the other a crook      
for life goes on as an open book      
and cares no jot, but we live that dare.      
       
       
       
       
       
#Robert Frost