Mending Wall
By Robert Frost
Robert Frost
• 1874 – 1963
• Published his first poem in 1894
• Lived in England from 1912-1915, published two
collections while living there, with the help of
Ezra Pound
• 1920s, most celebrated poet in America
• Won many awards including 4 Pulitzer prizes
• Most frequent subject is New England landscape
• Believed meter was essential to poetry at a time
when free verse was becoming the norm.
“Mending Wall”
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good
neighbors.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me—
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good
neighbors."
Frost reads “Mending Wall”
• Listen to and watch the following clip
which dubs a reading of “Mending Wall”
over video from the Berlin Wall
www.youtube.com
The Poem’s Speaker
• A farmer, probably in New England
• Participates in the yearly ritual of mending
the wall between his and his neighbor’s
property
• Takes up a philosophic analysis of the
purpose of the wall
The Poem’s Speaker
• Initiates the mending of the wall (“I let my
neighbor know beyond the hill”),
• Yet recognizes that the wall is needed only
in some areas, not in all (“My apple trees
will never get across / And eat the cones
under his pines, I tell him.”)
The Attitude of the Poem’s Speaker
toward the Poem’s Subject
• The poem has two main subjects:
– The wall
– The speaker’s neighbor
The Speaker’s Attitude Towards the
Wall
• The speaker sees both the practicality of
maintaining the wall in some places (for
instance, “where there are cows”) and the
impracticality of maintaining the wall where
there is no physical need for it (apples and
pines)
• He calls the task of mending the wall a
game and remarks:
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
The Attitude of the Speaker
Towards his Neighbor
• The speaker’s playfulness suggests a fondness
for his neighbor, or amusement at his neighbor’s
simple-mindedness..
• In response to his neighbor’s repetition of “Good fences
make good neighbors,” he considers a way to make his
neighbor think more deeply, saying,
“Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head: […]
I could say “Elves” to him,
But it's not elves exactly”
The Attitude of the Speaker
Towards his Neighbor
The tone changes from playfulness to critical
with the final image:
“Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage
armed.”
The Poem’s Organization
• One long stanza
• Loose blank verse
• Sentence lengths vary
The Poem’s Organization
• The poem breaks down into __ sections:
1. Lines 1-11: The speaker compares the two
types of gaps (man-made and caused by the
weather) he finds in walls.
2. Lines 12-22: A description of the task of
mending the wall
3. Lines 23-27: The speaker raises the question
of why a wall is needed between the pines and
apply orchard and the neighbor’s only answer
is that it is.
The Poem’s Organization
4. Lines 28-38: The speaker becomes more
persistent in questioning why they need the
wall, but he doesn’t vocalize his question,
because he knows his neighbor’s answer will
not change
5. Lines 39-45: The speaker’s view of the
neighbor shifts from amused to critical, as he
sees the neighbor as a simpleton who will not
question lessons his father has handed him.
Dominant Imagery
The Wall
• A rough stone wall of irregularly shaped
stones, typical of New England landscape,
formed with odd rocks from the fields.
Made to be useful, not beautiful
The Farms
• We picture pastures with cows, an apple
orchard, wood lots
Dominant Imagery
The “old-stone savage armed”
• Switch from more literal description to
figurative
– This simile transforms the poem from a
narrative of a farm ritual to a greater
statement about humankind
– The farmer becomes representative of closeminded, provincial people who are unwilling to
consider a new outlook
Diction and Syntax
• Simple, concrete language
• Syntax is simple and conversational with the
exception of the first line, which is repeated in
line 35:
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”
As opposed to the standard:
There is something that doesn’t love a wall
OR, more simply:
Something doesn’t love a wall
Syntax
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”
• Inverted subject/verb order gives the line
an old-fashioned feel
– The outdated manner of speech suggests a
sort of ancient wisdom (think Yoda), a lesson
learned from nature which resists, and has
always resisted, walls
Conclusions
“Mending Wall” is a poem that resists a
literal reading. What begins as a simple
poem about farm life becomes a criticism
of all people whose perspectives are
limited and who do not question the
lessons the previous generation has
handed down.
Conclusions
The poem’s title should not be overlooked:
Before reading the poem, the grammar of
the title leads us to expect that the wall
performs an action of “mending,”
perhaps the relationships between
people, or the unity of whatever is kept
inside the wall, but we learn that in fact
by mending the wall, it is divisions that
are being mended.