Content and Poetic devices

• Tone: The poet’s attitude toward the poem’s speaker, reader, and subject matter, as interpreted by the reader. Often described as a “mood” that pervades the experience of reading the poem, it is created by the poem’s vocabulary, metrical regularity or irregularity, syntax, use of figurative language, and rhyme. ( Poetry Foundation.)

• To understand the language, we must look at the words associated with emotions. Hence, word choice and tone are connected.

• What is word choice? It refers to the words a poet chooses to use.

The tone of the poem.
One of the first words that indicate feeling in the poem is in the first stanza, where the speaker says he feels sorry for not being able to pick both paths. This word reflects the speaker’s fear of missing out on something and sets a tone of regret in the poem.
The words “long I stood” also reflect the speaker’s sense of time; he feels that he has been standing for a long time while trying to make a decision. Hence, this phrase establishes a tone of indecisiveness.
The phrase “perhaps the better claim,” also reflects the tone of dilemma and indecisiveness in the poem

Figurative language and Poetic devices

Figurative language in literature is when the author describes something through its relation to something else rather than describing it directly. Thus poets use poetic devices.

Examples from the poem:

1. Metaphor: The poem uses many metaphors, like road, fork in the road, and yellowwoods. The road in the poem is the metaphor for life, while the fork on the road metaphorically represents the choices we make to determine the course of our lives. 
2. Simile: One simile is used in the second stanza as “as just as fair”. It shows how the poet has linked the road less taken to the easy way through life.
3. Personification: In the second stanza, the road is personified “Because it was grassy and wanted wear,” as if the road is human and that it wants to wear and tear.