Here’s a detailed analysis of Robert Frost’s poem ‘Mending Wall’; it’s tailored towards students taking the CIE / Cambridge A Level syllabus but will be useful for anyone who’s working on understanding the poem at any level.
Great for revision, missed lessons, boosting analytical / r...
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 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 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.’
VOCABULARY
Frozen ground swell - as the ground freezes, the water in it expands and so it
changes shape and swells (becomes larger), this shift in turn affects the stable
structure of the wall
Boulder - a large, heavy rock
Yelping - a high pitched squeaking noise that dogs make out of pain or excitement
Loaves - the plural of ‘loaf’, as in bread
A savage - a primitive person, tribal or uncivilised
STORY/SUMMARY
There is something that doesn’t like walls and boundaries (potentially nature or the
speaker), which causes the ground to swell under the wall, and the rocks at the top of
the wall to break as they are scolded by the sun. It creates gaps large enough for two
people to walk through. Hunters do not create walls, but instead catch rabbits,
satisfying their dogs, and conform to what nature wants. No one sees or hears how the
gaps in the walls are made, but in the Spring they are always found there. The speaker
lets his neighbour (who lives beyond the hill) know and they arrange to walk down the
line to mend it. They keep the wall between them as they fix it, responsible for the
rocks on their own side. They are a large range of sizes and they struggle to make
them balance until their backs turn. They wear their fingers down in doing so and the
speaker wonders if it is a type of game, and notes that they have no need for the wall
because they both have trees - the neighbour has pines and the speaker an apple
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