# Mending Wall analysis

Mending Wall — Robert Frost (1914)

This Mending Wall analysis explains the poem’s meaning, themes, form, and literary devices.

Full text from [Mending Wall](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/North_of_Boston/Mending_Wall). Public domain in the US (First published in 1914 or earlier, placing this text in the public domain in the United States.).

## Summary

Two neighbors meet each spring to rebuild a stone wall. The speaker sees no practical need for it, while the neighbor repeats an inherited proverb about fences and neighbors.

```
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;
```

The poem’s structure makes its central tension memorable.[1]

## Meaning and interpretation

The wall is physical and philosophical. The speaker questions what it excludes, yet he summons the neighbor and joins the repair, so the ritual both divides and creates contact.[1]

```
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.
```

Its images turn an abstract concern into a scene readers can hear and see.[2]

## Themes

### Boundaries and belonging

The poem returns to boundaries and belonging through recurring images and shifts in voice.[1]

### Tradition and critical thought

```
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.
```

This theme is developed through the poem’s contrast between image and argument.[2]

## Form and meter

The single 46-line poem is conversational blank verse, chiefly iambic pentameter without end rhyme. Its continuous lineation makes the walk and argument feel ongoing.[2]

```
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;
```

## Literary devices

### Personification

```
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;
```

The device gives the scene an emotional or rhetorical force beyond literal description.

### Irony and extended metaphor

```
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.
```

The repeated image or sound helps connect the local detail to the poem’s larger meaning.

## Historical context

Mending Wall opens North of Boston, published in 1914. Frost’s rural details support broader readings about social and national borders, but the poem preserves ambiguity.[4]

The poem’s later reception also shapes how readers understand its central images.[2]

## What critics say

> “If fences do not “make good neighbors,” the “making” of fences can.”
>
> — [Critical source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/150774/robert-frost-mending-wall)

> “Doubt is what makes “Mending Wall” a poem and not an editorial.”
>
> — [Critical source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/150774/robert-frost-mending-wall)

## Common questions

### What is the main meaning of Mending Wall?

The poem explores boundaries and belonging and uses its central images to make that concern emotionally immediate.

### What are the main themes?

Its main themes include boundaries and belonging and tradition and critical thought.

### What form does the poem use?

The single 46-line poem is conversational blank verse, chiefly iambic pentameter without end rhyme. Its continuous lineation makes the walk and argument feel ongoing.

## References

- [Critical source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/150774/robert-frost-mending-wall)

- [Critical source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/150774/robert-frost-mending-wall)

- [Wikisource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/North_of_Boston/Mending_Wall)

- [Wikisource and contextual notes](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/North_of_Boston/Mending_Wall)

## Open the editor

Write with this poem’s meter in the editor: https://lyriic.com/write/blank-verse