When was the poem published?

This poem was originally published in 1916 in a collection entitled Mountain Interval; it was the first poem in the book. The poem relies on the symbol of the two roads, diverging in the forest. They represent a choice, really any choice, in a person's life. The narrator, a traveler, examines both roads from his vantage point and knows he must make a decision about which one to take. It is a difficult decision for him because the second road is "just as fair" as the first, and "the passing there / Had worn them really about the same": in other words, just about the same number of people have taken each road. He wishes there were some way that he could take both roads, but he knows that once he picks one, it will never really be possible to take the other one because "way leads on to way." One decision leads to another leads to another, and so on, and one ends up far away from one's original choice.
Ultimately, the narrator says that he will eventually, when he's older, tell people that he took the road that had been "less traveled by" other people, but such a road does not exist in the poem because "both that morning equally lay." This seems to indicate, then, that people like to believe that they have made unique choices even though such unique choices really do not exist. The choices we make may seem quite meaningful, in hindsight especially, though they really are not.