Stone wall at Frost's farm in
Derry, New Hampshire
, which he describes
in "Mending Wall."
"
Mending
Wall
" is a metaphorical
poem
written in
blank verse
, published
in 1914, by
Robert Frost
(1874
鈥?/p>
1963). The poem appeared as the first
selection
in
Frost's
second
collection
of
poetry,
North of Boston
.
It
is
set in the countryside and is about one man questioning why he and his
neighbor must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring.
It
is
perhaps
best
known
for
its
line
spoken
by
the
neighbor:
"Good
fences
make good neighbors." The line is listed by the
Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations
as
a
mid
17th
century
proverb
,
which
was
given
a
boost
in
the
American consciousness due to its prominence in the poem.
The
opening
lines
evoke
the
coy
posture
of
the
shrewd
imaginative
man
who
understands
the words
of
the
farmer
in
'The
Mountain":
"All
the
fun's
in
how
you
say
a
thing," It
does
not
take
more
than
one
reading
of
the
poem
to understand that the speaker is not a country primitive who is easily
spooked
by
the
normal
processes
of
nature.
He
knows
very
well
what
it
is
"that
doesn't
love
a
wall"
(frost,
of
course).
His
fun
lies
in
not
naming
it. And in not naming the scientific truth he is able to manipulate
intransigent
fact
into
the
world
of
the
mind
where
all
things
are
pliable.
The
artful
vagueness
of
the
phrase
"Something
there
is"
is
enchanting
and
magical,
suggesting
even
the
bushed
tones
of
reverence
before
mystery
in
nature. And the speaker (who is not at all reverent toward nature)
consciously works at deepening that sense of mystery: The play of the
mature,
imaginative
man
is
grounded
in
ironic
awareness--and
must
be.
Even
as he excludes verifiable realities from his fictive world the
unmistakable
tone
of
scorn
for
the
hunters
comes
seeping
through.
He
may
step into a fictive world but not before glancing back briefly at the
brutality that attends upon the play of others. Having paid for his
imaginaive
excursions
by
establishing
his
complex
awareness,
he
is
free
to
close
the
magic
circle
cast
out
by
his
playful
energies,
and
close
out
the
world
reported
by
the
senses
("No
one
has
seen
them
made
or
heard
them
made"). In knowing how to say a thing in and through adroit linguistic
manipulation,
the
fiction
of
the
"something"
that
doesn't
love
a
wall
is
created; the imagined reality stands formed before him, ready to be
entered.Like
the
selves
dramatized
in
"Going
For
Water"
and
"The
Tuft
of
Flowers," this persona would prefer not to be alone in his imaginative
journey:
If
the
fact
of
a
broken
wall
is
excuse
enough
to
make
a
fiction
about
why
it
got
that
way,
then
that
same
fact
may
be
the
occasion
for
two
together
to take a journey in the mind. For those still tempted to read "Mending
Wall" as political allegory (the narrator standing for a broad-minded