Mending Wall by Robert Frost: poem analysis & meaning

Mending Wall the full poem, lines numbered

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.

5The 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,

10No 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.

15We 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!”

20We 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.

25My 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:

30“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.

35Something 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

40In 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

45He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

The poem in 60 seconds

Every spring, two neighbors walk the length of a stone wall and put back the stones that have fallen. The speaker doubts the wall does any good: one side is pine woods, the other apple orchard. The neighbor answers with his father’s saying, “Good fences make good neighbours.” That line is often quoted as the poem’s message, but it belongs to the neighbor, and the speaker spends the poem questioning it, while still helping to build the wall.

Something there is that does not love a wall, the speaker says. It sends the frozen ground swelling under the wall and spills the top stones, making gaps two people could walk through side by side. Hunters break the wall too, pulling stones down to drive out a rabbit for their dogs, and the speaker has followed them to make repairs. But the gaps the speaker means appear with no one seeing them made, and are found each spring. The speaker lets the neighbor beyond the hill know, and they meet to walk the line and set the wall up again, each handling the stones fallen on their own side. The speaker calls it a kind of outdoor game and says they do not need the wall here: the neighbor’s land is all pine and the speaker’s is apple orchard. The neighbor only says good fences make good neighbors. The speaker is tempted to ask what a wall keeps in or out, but would rather the neighbor worked it out for himself. Carrying stones like an armed savage from the Stone Age, the neighbor seems to move in darkness, and he repeats his father’s saying.

Speaker & situation

SpeakerA farmer who owns an apple orchard (line 24) and tells the story in the first person. Playful and questioning, the speaker doubts the wall is needed, yet is the one who calls the neighbor to mend it each spring (line 12).

ListenerNo named listener. The speaker describes the neighbor to the reader and reports what each of them says.

Occasion“Spring mending-time” (line 11), when the two neighbors walk their shared wall and set back the stones that fell over the winter.

SettingA stone wall on the boundary between two properties, with the neighbor “beyond the hill” (line 12). His side is pine woods and the speaker’s is apple orchard (line 24).

ToneConversational, wry and teasing (“Spring is the mischief in me,” line 28), darkening near the end as the speaker describes the neighbor moving “in darkness” (line 41).

The speaker

Narrator and apple farmer

Owns the apple orchard and tells the story. Playful and questioning, the speaker doubts the wall is needed, yet each spring is the one who calls the neighbor to rebuild it.

The neighbor

Farmer beyond the hill

Owns the pine woods on the other side. He says almost nothing beyond his father’s saying, which he repeats. Everything we learn about him comes through the speaker’s eyes.

Form & sound

FormBlank verse; 45 lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter in one unbroken stanza, close to the rhythm of ordinary talk.

MeterIambic pentameter, loosened toward speech. Line 1, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” opens with a stressed syllable and inverted word order, putting “Something” first. Line 24, “He is all pine and I am apple orchard,” adds a soft extra syllable at the end.

SoundThe lines do not rhyme, so the poem sounds like someone thinking and talking while working. Heavy consonants in phrases like “frozen-ground-swell” (line 2) and “grasped firmly by the top” (line 39) give weight to the stones.

StructureTwo sayings frame and punctuate the poem: the speaker’s “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” (lines 1 and 35) and the neighbor’s “Good fences make good neighbours” (lines 27 and 45). The poem ends on the neighbor’s words, not the speaker’s.

TextThe spellings “neighbour” and “offence” are the book’s own. North of Boston, where the poem appeared, was first published in London in 1914.

Line by line what each part says and does

1

Lines 1–11

What breaks the wall

Something does not love a wall: frost swells the ground beneath it and spills the top boulders, leaving gaps two people could pass through. Hunters also pull stones down to drive out rabbits, and the speaker has repaired after them. But the gaps the speaker means appear unseen, and are found each spring.

How it worksThe unnamed “Something” is given a will of its own, as if nature itself opposed the wall. The speaker separates this quiet, mysterious undoing from the obvious damage done by hunters.
2

Lines 12–22

Mending time

The speaker lets the neighbor beyond the hill know, and they meet to walk the line and set the wall between them once again, each lifting the stones that fell on their own side. Some stones are so round they need a spell to stay put. It is just another kind of outdoor game, the speaker says.

How it worksThe wall keeps them apart even as they work together: “We keep the wall between us as we go” (line 15). The comic spell in line 19 and the talk of a “game” (line 21) show the speaker’s light, teasing attitude to the chore.
3

Lines 23–27

Pine and apple orchard

The speaker says the wall is not needed here. The neighbor’s land is all pine and the speaker’s is apple orchard, and the apple trees will never cross over to eat the pine cones. The neighbor answers only, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

How it worksThe speaker’s joke about apple trees eating pine cones makes the wall look pointless. The neighbor does not argue back; he offers a proverb, and the gap between the two ways of talking is the heart of the poem.
4

Lines 28–38

The notion the speaker holds back

Spring puts mischief in the speaker, who wonders about putting a notion in the neighbor’s head: why do fences make good neighbors, where there are no cows, and what would a wall be walling in or out. The speaker could say “Elves” but would rather the neighbor said it himself.

How it worksLines 30 to 36 sit inside quotation marks, but they are framed as what the speaker wonders about saying, and the poem never shows the neighbor hearing them. The speaker wants the neighbor to reach the doubt on his own, and he never does.
5

Lines 39–45

The neighbor in darkness

The speaker watches the neighbor carry a stone in each hand, gripped by the top, like an armed savage from the Stone Age. He seems to move in a darkness that is not only the shade of the trees. He will not go beyond his father’s saying, and, pleased with it, he says it again.

How it worksThe comparison is the speaker’s own picture (“I see him there,” line 38), and the next line openly marks the darkness as the speaker’s impression: “as it seems to me” (line 41). The neighbor keeps the last word, and the poem leaves it to the reader to decide how fair the speaker’s picture of him is.

The turn

Lines 28

Lines 1 to 27 describe the wall, the mending and the neighbor’s first reply. At line 28, “Spring is the mischief in me,” the speaker turns from reporting to challenging, weighing questions that would unsettle the neighbor’s saying. From there the poem moves toward the darker picture of the neighbor in lines 39 to 45.

Literary devices with line numbers

Personification

In line 1, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” an unnamed force is given likes and dislikes, and in line 36 it “wants it down.” The frost that heaves the stones (lines 2 and 3) becomes an agent that seems to oppose the wall.

Repetition

Each man’s saying appears twice. The speaker’s line 1 returns in line 35, and the neighbor’s “Good fences make good neighbours” comes in line 27 and again as the last line. The repetition sets two outlooks against each other and lets the neighbor’s finish the poem.

Irony

The speaker who questions the wall is the one who calls the neighbor to mend it: “I let my neighbour know beyond the hill” (line 12). The speaker has also repaired the damage hunters left (lines 5 to 7). Doubting the wall does not stop the speaker from keeping it up.

Metaphor

In line 24, “He is all pine and I am apple orchard,” each man becomes his land. In lines 41 and 42 the neighbor “moves in darkness,” which the speaker says is “Not of woods only,” turning the shade of the trees into a darkness of mind or habit.

Simile

In line 40 the neighbor holds a stone in each hand, “like an old-stone savage armed.” The comparison makes a farmer at work look like a primitive warrior, which says as much about the speaker’s view of him as about the man.

Imagery

The boulders that are “loaves” and “so nearly balls” (line 17), the spell to make them balance (lines 18 and 19) and the fingers worn “rough with handling them” (line 20) make the labor physical and specific.

Themes in Mending Wall

Boundaries and connectionTradition and questioningNature against human orderTalking and not talking

Boundaries and connection

The wall divides the two men, but mending it is also the one time each year they meet. “We keep the wall between us as we go” (line 15) captures both at once: they work side by side with the wall between them.

Tradition and questioning

The neighbor “will not go behind his father’s saying” (line 43), while the speaker wants to ask what the wall is for (lines 32 to 34). The poem sets inherited wisdom against the urge to test it, without fully taking either side.

Nature against human order

Frozen ground, sun and some unnamed “Something” keep pulling the wall down (lines 1 to 4 and 35 to 36), and the men keep putting it back. The poem suggests the wall must be rebuilt every year because the natural world does not respect it.

Talking and not talking

The speaker holds back the questions and would rather the neighbor “said it for himself” (line 38). The two men work together yet barely speak, so the poem also shows how little gets said between neighbors.

Images and symbols

The wall

The wall stands for any barrier people put up between themselves: of property, habit or reserve. It needs yearly repair, which suggests such barriers are kept up by choice and effort.

The unnamed “Something”

The force that “doesn’t love a wall” (line 1) is literally the frost, but the speaker leaves it mysterious, even joking about “Elves” (line 36). It stands for whatever in nature or in people works against division.

Darkness

The darkness the neighbor moves in (line 41) is “Not of woods only and the shade of trees” (line 42). In the speaker’s eyes it stands for unthinking habit, though the image tells us about the speaker as well.

Tensions

Person vs. person. A quiet disagreement: the speaker doubts the wall, and the neighbor trusts his father’s saying. It never becomes an argument, since the speaker leaves most of the questions unspoken and the neighbor answers only with the proverb.

Person vs. nature. The frost and the unnamed “Something” keep undoing the wall, and the two men rebuild it every spring. Neither side wins for good.

The ending

How Mending Wall ends, explained

The poem ends with the speaker watching the neighbor carry a stone in each hand, “like an old-stone savage armed” (line 40). The neighbor seems to move “in darkness,” and the speaker adds that it is “Not of woods only and the shade of trees” (lines 41 and 42). He “will not go behind his father’s saying” (line 43), and he likes the saying so much that he repeats it: “Good fences make good neighbours.” The last word belongs to the neighbor, not to the speaker. Readers respond to that in different ways. Many side with the speaker and read the neighbor as a man bound by habit, repeating a proverb he has never examined. Others notice that the speaker’s portrait is harsh and one-sided, marked by “as it seems to me” (line 41), and that the speaker is the one who calls for the mending each year (line 12). Some readers also hear sense in the proverb, since clear boundaries can keep the peace between neighbors. Frost sets the two sayings against each other twice and never tells us which is right. The wall is standing again by the end, and both men have built it.

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,”

Line 1, repeated in line 35. The speaker’s own saying: an unnamed force that works against walls.

“He is all pine and I am apple orchard.”

Line 24. The speaker’s case that the wall is not needed, each man summed up by his land.

“He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.””

Line 27. The neighbor’s reply, a saying from his father. It is his view, repeated in line 45, not the speaker’s.

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out,”

Lines 32–33. Part of the questions the speaker wonders about putting to the neighbor.

Common misreadings

MythThe poem’s message is that good fences make good neighbors.

ActuallyThat line is spoken by the neighbor (lines 27 and 45), and it comes from his father (line 43). The speaker questions it (lines 30 to 34). The poem sets the two views against each other and does not simply endorse the proverb.

MythThe speaker wants the wall gone, and the neighbor makes the speaker rebuild it.

ActuallyLine 12 says “I let my neighbour know beyond the hill”: the speaker starts the mending. The speaker has also repaired the gaps hunters made (lines 5 to 7) and calls the work a kind of “out-door game” (line 21).

MythThe comparison to an “old-stone savage” is the poem’s final verdict on the neighbor.

ActuallyIt is the speaker’s impression: the speaker is describing what “I see” (line 38), and the darkness that follows is marked “as it seems to me” (line 41). The neighbor never explains himself, so the poem offers only the speaker’s view of him, and readers must judge how fair it is.

AP practice a poetry prompt in the exam's style

Read Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall,” first published in 1914. Then write an essay that analyzes how Frost uses literary elements and techniques to convey a complex perspective on the barriers people keep between themselves.

What a strong response notices

The personified “Something” in lines 1–4 and its return in lines 35–36.
The irony of line 12, where the doubting speaker is the one who calls the neighbor to mend the wall.
The line “We keep the wall between us as we go” (line 15) and the idea of a “game” in line 21.
The speaker’s questions in lines 30–34 about what a wall walls in or out.
The simile and darkness of lines 40–42, and the neighbor’s saying as the last line (line 45).

Practice prompt written by StoryBites, not taken from a College Board exam. See the AP Literature free-response guide for how answers are scored.

Test yourself

1. Who tells the neighbor it is time to mend the wall?

2. What grows on the neighbor’s side of the wall?

3. Where does the neighbor’s saying come from?

4. What form is the poem written in?

5. Why does the speaker think the wall is not needed?

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Answer

Explain it like I’m 12

Two neighbors share a stone wall. Every winter, the cold ground pushes stones off the top, so each spring they fix it together. The person telling the story thinks the wall is kind of pointless, because one side has pine trees and the other has apple trees, and trees don’t wander. The neighbor just keeps repeating what his dad used to say: good fences make good neighbors. The poem doesn’t tell you who is right. It asks you to think about why people build walls between each other.

Compare & connect

Fences

August Wilson

Wilson’s play turns on a fence that Troy Maxson is slowly building around his yard at his wife Rose’s request. Like Frost’s poem, it asks what a barrier keeps in and what it keeps out.

Self-Reliance

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson urges readers to trust their own thinking rather than repeat inherited opinions. Frost’s neighbor does the opposite, holding to his father’s saying, and the speaker wishes he would think it through for himself.

Birches

Robert Frost

Another Frost blank-verse poem set in the country, with a speaker who talks through an ordinary rural sight until it opens into larger questions.

Discussion and essay prompts:

💬 Discussion questions

What is the meaning of Mending Wall
Does Frost agree that good fences make good neighbors
Who says good fences make good neighbors in Mending Wall
How does Mending Wall explore the theme of boundaries and connection?
How does Mending Wall explore the theme of tradition and questioning?
What is the central conflict in Mending Wall, and how does it shape the ending?

✎ Essay prompts

Analyze how Robert Frost develops the theme of boundaries and connection in Mending Wall. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
Examine the significance of the wall in Mending Wall. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
How does Robert Frost use personification to shape the reader’s experience of Mending Wall?
Some readers assume that the poem’s message is that good fences make good neighbors. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.

Key questions students ask

What is the meaning of Mending Wall
Does Frost agree that good fences make good neighbors
Who says good fences make good neighbors in Mending Wall
What does the wall symbolize in Mending Wall
What is the something that doesn’t love a wall in Mending Wall
Why does the speaker help rebuild the wall in Mending Wall

Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The poem is printed from North of Boston (1914), checked line by line against the page images of the 1915 Henry Holt printing. First published in 1914, it is in the public domain in the United States.

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