The use of color here is interesting to the poem because the only other color that was mentioned previously was yellow, in describing the woods by themselves, without the mention of other life forms. Yellow and black are complete opposites as far as the spectrum of connotations associated with colors is concerned, as yellow typically appears to refer to sunshine and happiness, while black is associated with nighttime and evil. Perhaps here the speaker is claiming that a path traveled by many before him or her would have been despicable to view, and if he or she had seen that this had been so, they would have easily discerned between the two paths immediately.

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