Summary Of The Poem Autumn By Billy Collins

This poem is made up of four stanzas of five lines, each with a rhyme arrangement of ABAAB. In the first stanza, start of the poem, the two roads symbolize, the difficult choices that the narrator faces in life. He cannot take both, as much as he would want to, so he spends time in thoughts and observation.

He can’t see far, not as far as necessary to make a confident choice as to the better nature of one over the other. The fact that it is a "yellow wood" possibly implies that, as fall is often a sign of the fading years of someone's life, the speaker has gone through his youth, when he can make a choice with the confidence that it is correct at a later time.

The choice he makes will be permanent, highly influencing the rest of his fast vanishing days. As he approaches middle age, he comes to grip with the point that his time for hopes and dreams is past, he must come to grips with the reality created by the choices he has made. There in a repetition of the word “and” in the start of three lines, I think the author is trying to symbolize the continuance of the ongoing poem.
He has made a choice, but is still doubtful about it. It is "just as fair" yet it has "the better claim." He is still trying to persuade himself that both choices should have been acceptable just in case this path proves reckless. He cannot quite make up his mind about the wisdom of his decision. So that’s why he decides to not take a step