Robert Frost

Mending Wall

Natural Force Breaking Boundaries

Frost personifies a mysterious natural force that actively destroys human-made barriers. 'Something' suggests an unknowable, almost supernatural agent of disruption.

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 neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line

Ritual of Boundary Maintenance

Annual wall-mending is a performative social ritual, more about relationship than actual utility. The neighbors go through a choreographed interaction of repair.

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 neighbours."
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.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

Probing Social Boundaries

Frost uses the wall as a metaphor for social boundaries, questioning why humans create arbitrary divisions without examining their purpose.

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,

Natural Force Breaking Boundaries

Frost personifies a mysterious natural force that actively destroys human-made barriers. 'Something' suggests an unknowable, almost supernatural agent of disruption.

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

Primitive Territorial Behavior

The neighbor is described like a prehistoric human, 'an old-stone savage' rigidly following inherited traditions without questioning them.

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 neighbours."
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Ritual vs. Reason: The Wall as Social Metaphor

Boundary maintenance in this poem is more psychological than physical. Frost exposes how social conventions are often blindly repeated without critical examination.

The speaker challenges his neighbor's unquestioning acceptance of the proverb 'Good fences make good neighbours,' revealing how inherited wisdom can become meaningless ritual. By highlighting the absurdity of maintaining a wall between an apple orchard and pine trees, Frost critiques unexamined social boundaries.

Poetic Technique: Conversational Narrative

Frost uses dramatic monologue to create tension between rational questioning and traditional behavior. The poem's conversational tone masks a deeper philosophical inquiry about human social interactions.

The rhythmic, almost playful language disguises a serious exploration of how humans construct and maintain social divisions. Notice how the speaker's questioning remains gentle, never directly confrontational—a subtle critique embedded in seemingly casual dialogue.