Robert Frost
The poet was born on 26th March, 1874 Frost’s parents were of Scottish and English descent and he lived in California and Sanfransisco during his early years. Frost's father was a teacher, and later he became the editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin .The poet lived in close association with rural life durin his early days and moved to the city later. So he frequently uses themes from rural life in New England in his poems. Most of his poems centre around complex, social and philosophical themes. He ranks one among the best American poets and was honoured for receiving four Pulitzer Prizes. His first poem, "My Butterfly: An Elegy" was published in the
November 8, 1894 edition of the New York Independent. He married Elinor Miriam White, and attended Harvard University for two years. Frost ‘s grandfather purchased a farm for the young couple in Derry, New Hampshire, and Frost worked on the farm for nine years and wrote many of the poems that later became famous. His attempts at farming were not successful and Frost returned to education as an English teacher at Pinkerton Academy from 1906 to 1911, then at the New Hampshire Normal School . In 1912, Frost sailed with his family to Great Britain, and his first book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published the next year. In England he got the acquaintance of all the leading poets of the time. When the first world war began Frost returned to America in 1915 and resumed his vocation as a teacher and poet. He died a little more than two years later, in Boston, on January 29, 1963.
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 neighbors."
Poem Summary
In “The Mending Wall” Robert Frost makes use of the image of a wall to drive home the lesson that people unnecessarily create boundaries around themselves. The wall separating the farm of two neighbors is introduced as a primary symbol in the poem. Frost begins the poem by stating that there is something in nature that does not like wall. So it swells the ground beneath and manages to disintegrate the wall to such an extent that even two men can pass abreast through the opening. The poet is sure that the destruction of walls is not the work of rabbit hunters. The force that destroys the wall is unnameable. There is a mystery about who or what doesn't like a wall. No one has seen the holes being made but at springtime there are big holes in the wall.The narrator and his neighbour meet on a specified date and rebuild the wall. Rebuilding the wall is a laborious task. The stones are uneven in size and shape and they have to balance them delicately.They are tired by the time the wall is rebuilt.The speaker reinforces the idea that these breaks created by nature are more mysterious than those made by the hunters. This action cannot be observed, though the effects are consistent year after year. The speaker (poet) does not like a wall. He keeps rebuilding it only to please his neighbor. Very humorously Frost says:
“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.”
Both of them have different crops in their orchard. The pine cones will not walk up and eat the apples or vice versa. Yet his neighbour insists on building walls saying that good fences make good neighbours. The separation between them is also emphasized in the fact that they walk on opposite sides of the wall and as they are each responsible for replacing the stones that have fallen on each one’s side. While they are performing this act together, they do not actually assist each other.
Frost’s tone becomes playful in the lines, when he says that farmers often use fences to keep their livestock separated. Such a fence is unnecessary because they have only pine and apple trees, not cows or cattle. Again, the speaker considers trying to provoke his neighbor with practical objections, but he never makes this statement out loud.
In the concluding sections, Frost becomes philosophical and speculates abstractly. He wants to know what they are “walling in” and “walling out.” The double function of a wall is addressed, for not only are outsiders prevented from entry, but insiders are trapped inside. The speaker considers the possibility that walls “give offence” as he himself seems to be slightly offended, but he never reaches a conclusion about what it is within himself that is either walled in or walled out. Nor does he say that he himself doesn't love a wall, only that “something” doesn't He muses that “Elves” might have destroyed their wall. In the speaker’s eyes the neighbor resembles a savage, an old storage man armed with a stone. He implies that the neighbor is also using the stones as weapons; he is “armed.” In a sense, then, the fence becomes a weapon, even if its purpose is primarily defense. The speaker then moves from thoughts of the Stone Age to thoughts of the Dark Ages, where darkness functions as a symbol for a lack of insight that is understood as progress. His darkness is more than physical darkness provided by the shade. There is also emotional darkness in his refusal to leave the wall unmended. Frost concludes saying that his neighbor will not change his ideas, nor will he give up the practices set forth by his father. Like a savage the man keeps repeating “Good fences make good neighbors”.
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