Mending Wall
by Robert Frost
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In this famous poem, Robert Frost meditates on walls, boundaries and human relationships. Every spring the poet and his neighbour meet to repair the stone wall between their farms, though the poet questions whether the wall is needed at all. 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall,' he says, nature itself, through the frozen ground-swell, spills the boulders and makes gaps in it. The two men walk the line, each replacing the fallen stones on his own side, in what the poet calls 'just another kind of outdoor game'. The poet points out there is no real need for a wall: 'He is all pine and I am apple orchard', his apple trees will never cross over to eat the neighbour's pine cones. But the neighbour only repeats his father's saying: 'Good fences make good neighbours.' The mischievous poet wonders whether he could put a new notion in his neighbour's head, to ask what he is 'walling in or walling out' before building a wall. Yet the neighbour, moving 'in darkness' like 'an old-stone savage', will not go behind his father's saying and repeats it again. The poem contrasts two attitudes: the poet's openness and questioning spirit against the neighbour's unthinking adherence to tradition.
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'Mending Wall' by Robert Frost is a reflective poem about the wall that separates the poet's farm from his neighbour's, and about the human tendency to build barriers. It is written in blank verse and set at 'spring mending-time'.
'Something there is that doesn't love a wall'
The poet observes that nature seems to dislike walls: 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall.' The frozen ground swells and spills the upper boulders, making gaps 'even two can pass abreast'. These gaps appear mysteriously each spring, unseen and unheard in the making, unlike the deliberate destruction caused by hunters.
The wall-mending ritual
The poet lets his neighbour know, and on a set day they meet 'to walk the line' and rebuild the wall, each keeping to his own side and replacing the boulders that have fallen to him. Some stones are so oddly shaped they must use 'a spell to make them balance'. The poet calls it 'just another kind of outdoor game, / One on a side', a task that 'comes to little more'.
Two attitudes to the wall
The poet argues there is no real need for the wall: 'He is all pine and I am apple orchard.' His apple trees will never cross over to eat the cones under the neighbour's pines. But the neighbour simply repeats his father's saying: 'Good fences make good neighbours.'
Feeling the 'mischief' of spring, the poet wonders if he could make his neighbour question why fences make good neighbours, and ask what he is 'walling in or walling out' and 'to whom I was like to give offence'. He could blame the gaps on 'Elves', but knows it is not elves.
The neighbour, however, moves 'in darkness', not only of the woods, but of the mind, 'like an old-stone savage armed', carrying a stone in each hand. He will not go behind his father's saying, and, liking it well, repeats once more: 'Good fences make good neighbours.' The poem ends on this contrast between the questioning poet and the tradition-bound neighbour.