Mending Wall

By Robert Frost

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

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

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 neighbours."

Summary of the Poem

The story behind "Mending Wall" is quite a peculiar one. The story is that every year, two neighbours replace a stone wall that divides both of property. The narrator speaks as though he doesn't understand the tradition he has with this neighbour. He does not understand why they need to split their properties, if there is no livestock to be contained (only apples and pine trees). The narrator doesn't think a wall should exist just for the sake of existing. Moreover, the narrator cannot help notice that the outside world seems to think this tradition as strange as he does and he notices this when; mysterious gaps appear and boulders fall from the wall "for no reason". The neighbour on the other hand thinks that the wall is crucial to maintaining their relationship. By repeating the sentence "Good fences make good neighbours." Over the course of the mending, the narrator tries to convince his neighbours otherwise and accuses him of being an "old-fashioned" for keeping this tradition going so strictly. Yet, no matter what the narrator says the neighbour is convinced that only "Good fences make good neighbours." This poem is very mysterious, it leaves you thinking why someone would want such a thing as wall between two houses and this is what drew me in, to this poem.