“Mending Wall” Introduction

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“Mending Wall” Summary

“Mending Wall” Themes

• 

  Borders

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  The Value of Work

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  Change and Modernity

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Mending Wall”

• Lines 1-4

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 5-9

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 9-10

  The gaps I mean,
  No one has seen them made or heard them made,

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 11-16

  But at spring mending-time we find them there.
  I let my neighbour 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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 17-22

  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:

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 23-27

  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 neighbours."

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 28-31

  Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
  If I could put a notion in his head:
  "Why
   do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
  Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 32-38

  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.
  

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 38-42

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 43-45

  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 neighbours."

  

  

  

  

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“Mending Wall” Symbols

• 

  Frost

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  Spring

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• 

  Fences

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  Cows

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• 

  Darkness

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“Mending Wall” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Enjambment

  

  

  

  

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• End-Stopped Line

  

  

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

  

  

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• Refrain

  

  

  

  

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• Allusion

  

  

  

  

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• Metaphor

  

  

  

  

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• Simile

  

  

  

  

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• Polyptoton

  

  

  

  

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• Epanalepsis

  

  

  

  

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• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

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• Assonance

  

  

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

  

  

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“Mending Wall” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Frozen-ground-swell
• Abreast
• Mending-time
• Offence
• Elves
• Old-stone
• Savage

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Mending Wall”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“Mending Wall” Speaker

“Mending Wall” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “Mending Wall”

More “Mending Wall” Resources

• External Resources

  • Sadie Stein on "Mending Wall" — The critic Sadie Stein discusses "Mending Wall" for the Paris Review.

  • Frost Poetics — A group of scholars and poets debate Frost's "Mending Wall" at the Kelly Writers' House at the University of Pennsylvania.    

  • Was Robert Frost a Modernist? — Poet and critic Robert Pinsky considers whether Frost was a modernist.    

  • Robert Frost Reads "Mending Wall" — The poet himself reads "Mending Wall" aloud.

  • Essays on "Mending Wall" — A series of essays on "Mending Wall" from the University of Illinois.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Frost

  • Acquainted with the Night

  • After Apple-Picking

  • A Roadside Stand

  • Birches

  • Desert Places

  • Design

  • Dust of Snow

  • Fire and Ice

  • Home Burial

  • Mowing

  • My November Guest

  • Nothing Gold Can Stay

  • Out, Out—

  • Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

  • The Death of the Hired Man

  • The Oven Bird

  • The Road Not Taken

  • The Sound of the Trees

  • The Tuft of Flowers

  • The Wood-Pile