MENDING WALL
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."
Robert Frost’s famous poem ‘Mending Wall’ includes a lot of images that have symbolic meaning:
- Mending wall – the primary symbol in the poem that depicts psychological barrier between two people represented by the physical barrier of the wall. This symbol has a very important meaning in the life of every person as it presupposes overcoming certain obstacles on the way to other person’s heart.
- Gaps in the wall – symbolize the hope for future closer relations and the triumph of the unconventional.
- Spring – represents new beginning, rebirth as well as the tradition to rebuild the walls between neighbors in New England.
- Rabbit and yelping dogs – rabbit can be a symbol of innocent and defenseless person while yelping dogs can be referred to as predatory and cruel people of our society. These symbols are very often used in fables.
Pine and apple orchard- are symbols of absolutely different personalities that usually do not interact much and, thus, cannot cause any harm to each other. - Cows – symbolize destruction and possible damages.
- Elves – personification of goodies, someone who would make some good things without being noticed.
- A stone – represents the desire to be keep barriers by rebuilding them, and consequently, the desire to be isolated from the outside world (refusal to socialize).
- Darkness – the poet implies loneliness and the denial of friendship or any communication in this symbol.
- ‘Good fences make good neighbors’- a proverb presented by the stylistic device of repetition symbolizes conventional way of thinking and demonstrates preference to traditions rather than any changes, even if they are for better.
