“Mending Wall”
Robert Frost
Biography
- Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet.
- His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States.
- Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California. Frost’s father was a teacher.
Awards and recognition:
Frost was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 31 times.
Pulitzer Prizes
• 1924 for New Hampshire: A Poem With Notes and Grace Notes
• 1931 for Collected Poems
• 1937 for A Further Range
• 1943 for A Witness TreePoetry collections
• 1913. A Boy’s Will. London: David Nutt (New York: Holt, 1915)[66]
• 1914. North of Boston. London: David Nutt (New York: Holt, 1914)
o “After Apple-Picking”
o “The Death of the Hired Man”
o “Mending Wall”
• 1916. Mountain Interval. New York: Holt
o “Birches”
o “Out, Out”
o “The Oven Bird”
o “The Road Not Taken”
• 1923. Selected Poems. New York: Holt.
o “The Runaway”
o Also includes poems from first three volumes
• 1923. New Hampshire. New York: Holt (London: Grant Richards, 1924)
Poem
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 outdoor 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 offense.
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.’
Summary
Mending wall is quite a stimulating poem that challenges conventional thinking. Written by Robert Frost, it got published in 1914 and gained massive popularity globally for its simple yet insightful theme. Mending wall summary will take you through the poem in brief. Moreover, it will also help in getting an understanding of the analysis of the poem.
Mending wall summary will begin by introducing the two main characters of the poem. It is about two neighbours that have a wall between them. Moreover, it is mainly about their yearly activity of mending the wall every spring.
Both the neighbours are of conflicting views. While the speaker feels there is no need for walls, his neighbour believes the opposite. They both live over a hill and together they are walking along the wall and fixing the gaps along the way. Further, they’re both on the opposite sides of the wall in their respective boundaries.
The poet describes that there are rocks on the ground on both their sides which look like loaves of bread. Similarly, others are round like balls. In mending wall summary, the poet explains how their fingers chafe after picking up the rocks.
He considers it just an activity and nothing more. Further, the poet believes that there is no requirement for a wall. In other words, he means that they just have trees only. Thus, they won’t cross and do any harm.
However, his neighbour does not think the same. He responds with ‘good fences are necessary to have good neighbours’. The poet disagrees because it’s not like they have any cows that will cross over.
In addition, he says that there is a force which does not love a wall. That is to say, it wants to pull it down. The poet proposes that elves could be making gaps in the wall. However, he wishes the neighbour to understand on his own.
In the conclusion of the mending wall summary, the poet wishes his neighbors figures it out because he does not want to change his traditional thinking. So much so that he repeats the statement of good fences again.
Conclusion of Mending Wall Summary
Mending Wall summary symbolizes the life duality along with an underlying theme of destruction and creation that goes hand in hand. He says that the wall is a representation of uncertainty, separating and uniting two people simultaneously.