How can I compare and contrast "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost and "Fifteen" by William Stafford?

In
both "The Road Not Taken" and "Fifteen," the speakers are on the edge of an
adventurous journey in a natural and secluded area--the woods and the "back of the
woods" south of a bridge at the edge of town, respectively. Both speakers become cautious
and do not to venture forth into areas that may prove risky. In contrast, though, at the end of
their narratives, the speaker of Frost's poem expresses a certain self-doubt and incompleteness
while the speaker of Stafford's poem feels self-restoration.

As he takes a
walk, Frost's speaker discovers two enticing lanes in the woods that are
"untrodden,"

                                 
 ...long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

Stafford's speaker, on the other hand, discovers a running
motorcycle that attracts him with the prospect of a new, exciting adventure. The object at which
he looks assumes a femininity that is seductive:

I
admired all that pulsing gleam, the 
shiny flanks, the demure
headlights
fringed where it lay

Further, the
speaker of "Fifteen" indulges delightedly in his imagination of the adventure that he
can have with this machine, and he even takes it to the road. But as he has "a forward
feeling" and there is a tremble, he changes his mind and returns with the motorcycle to the
place he has found it. "Thinking," he finds the owner, whose hand is bleeding. He
helps the owner to his motorcycle and the other calls him a "good man" and rides
off.

 

Both the bridge where the fifteen-year-old
feels the "forward feeling" but resists it and the point where the two roads
"diverged" and the speaker chooses the one more traveled are junctures in the lives of
the speakers of the two poems. These choices that the speakers have made are for what is real
over that which is imagined. For both speakers there is a sense of loss and a change in
themselves; in contrast, however, Stafford's speaker has grown from his experience, while
Frost's speaker merely reflects that his choice "has made all the difference" to
him.