Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com Mending Wall POEM TEXT 42 Not of woods only and the shade of trees. 43 He will not go behind his father's saying, 1 Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 44 And he likes having thought of it so well 2 That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, 45 He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours." 3 And spills the upper boulders in the sun; 4 And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. 5 The work of hunters is another thing: SUMMARY 6 I have come after them and made repair 7 Where they have left not one stone on a stone, There is some force that doesn’t like walls. It causes the frozen 8 But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, ground to swell underneath a wall, and the wall's upper stones 9 To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, then topple off in the warmth of the sun. This creates gaps in the wall so big that two people could walk through them side- 10 No one has seen them made or heard them made, by-side. And then there are the hunters who take apart the 11 But at spring mending-time we find them there. wall—that’s something different. I often have to come and fix 12 I let my neighbour know beyond the hill; the spots where hunters haven't left a single stone in place, as 13 And on a day we meet to walk the line they tried to flush out the abbitsr that hide in the wall in order 14 And set the wall between us once again. to make their barking dogs happy. No one has seen or heard 15 We keep the wall between us as we go. these gaps in the wall being made. We just find them there in 16 To each the boulders that have fallen to each. the spring, when it comes time to fix the wall. I reach out to my 17 And some are loaves and some so nearly balls neighbor, who lives over a hill, and we find a day to get together and walk along the wall, fixing these gaps as we go. He walks on 18 We have to use a spell to make them balance: his side of the wall and I on mine, and we deal only with 19 "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!" whatever rocks have fallen off the wall on our side of it. Some of 20 We wear our fingers rough with handling them. them look like loaves of bread and some are round like balls, so 21 Oh, just another kind of out-door game, we pray that they’ll stay in place, balanced on top of the wall, 22 One on a side. It comes to little more: saying: "Don’t move until we’re gone!" Our fingers get chafed 23 There where it is we do not need the wall: from picking up the rocks. It’s just another outside activity, each 24 He is all pine and I am apple orchard. of us on our side of the wall, nothing more. 25 My apple trees will never get across 26 And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. There’s no need for a wall to be there. On my neighbor’s side of the wall, there’s nothing but pine trees; my side is an apple 27 He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours." orchard. It’s not like my apple trees are going to cross the wall 28 Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder and eat his pine cones, I say to him. But he just responds, "Good 29 If I could put a notion in his head: fences are necessary to have good neighbors." Since it’s spring 30 "Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it and I feel mischievous, I wonder if I could make my neighbor ask 31 Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. himself: "Why are they necessary? Isn’t that only true if you’re 32 Before I built a wall I'd ask to know trying to keep your neighbor’s cows out of your fields? There 33 What I was walling in or walling out, aren’t any cows here. If I were to build a wall, I’d want to know 34 And to whom I was like to give offence. what I was keeping in and what I was keeping out, and who was 35 Something there is that doesn't love a wall, going to be offended by this. There is some force that doesn’t love a wall, that wants to pull it down.” I could propose that 36 That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him, Elves are responsible for the gaps in the wall, but it’s not exactly 37 But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather Elves, and, anyway, I want my neighbor to figure it out on his 38 He said it for himself. I see him there own. I see him, lifting up stones, grasping them firmly yb the 39 Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top top, in each hand, like an ancient warrior. He moves in a deep 40 In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. darkness—not just the darkness of the woods or the trees 41 He moves in darkness as it seems to me, above. He does not want to think beyond his set idea about the world, and he likes having articulated this idea so clearly. So he ©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 1 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com says it again: “Good fences are necessary to have good implying that the neighbors don't trust each other. neighbors.” The speaker and his neighbor thus disagree over an issue so fundamental to human society and political thinking: they debate whether conflicts between human beings are inevitable THEMES (if preventable) or whether those conflicts are the result of misguided cynicism about the possibility of peace between BORDERS people. At its heart, “Mending Wall” is a poem about Yet though the speaker gets the most air-time in the poem, it's borders—the work it takes to maintain them and the not entirely clear that the reader is supposed to take the way they shape human interactions. The speaker and the speaker's side. Instead, the poem itself remains decidedly speaker's neighbor spend much of the poem rebuilding a wall ambiguous—for all the speaker's complaints about the wall, the that divides their properties. As they do so, they debate the speaker is the one who sets the mending in motion by reaching function of the wall and how it affects their relationship. out to the neighbor, and the poem even gives the neighbor the The speaker suggests that the wall is unnecessary, both final word. practically and politically: in the speaker's mind, walls exclude The poem thus asks its reader to decide for themselves who is people, injuring otherwise harmonious relationships. But the right and who is wrong, and to make up their minds about the neighbor argues that walls actually improve relationships, utility of walls, borders, and other political and physical devices because they allow people to treat each other fairly and that divide people. prevent conflict. The poem doesn't fall too heavily on either side of the debate, ultimately allowing readers to decide for Where this theme appears in the poem: themselves which vision of human community is most • Lines 1-45 convincing. The speaker believes the wall isn't necessary, given the crops that the speaker and the neighbor grow: while cattle might THE VALUE OF WORK wander over to graze in someone else's pasture, the speaker's As the speaker describes it, the work of “Mending apples aren't going to eat the neighbor's pine trees. More Wall” is ritualistic: each year, the speaker and the importantly, the speaker believes that walls actively damage neighbor walk along the wall together and repair the sections people's relationships. This is because walls are likely to “give that have been damaged by frost or by hunters over the offense”—that is, to offend people with their implication of previous year. It is hard, taxing work: by the end, their hands mistrust and exclusion. are chapped from it. The difficulty of the work, and the need to The speaker thus asks the neighbor why they need to continue renew it every year, makes the speaker question why—and repairing the wall at all. In response, the neighbor says simply whether—it’s necessary to keep rebuilding the wall. More and repeatedly: "Good fences make good neighbours." He broadly, the act of repairing the wall serves as an allegory for believes that a good neighbor establishes clear boundaries, and human labor. Though the speaker and the neighbor continue to in doing so prevents problems from arising between people rebuild the wall, the poem calls into question the value of labor who live near each other. The neighbor seems haunted by the for labor’s sake—and asks whether a different relationship to possibility of future conflicts. In fact, he seems to regard such work might be possible. conflicts as an inevitable part of life—and as such that it’s At the heart of the poem’s meditation is a routine, even important to take steps to prevent them.