24.5: Robert Frost

“Mending Wall”

By Robert Frost

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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 neighbours."

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“The Road Not Taken”

By Robert Frost

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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

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Post-Reading Questions for Frost:

1) “Mending Wall” and “The Road Not Taken” are two of Robert Frost’s most often quoted poems. They are also two of most often misunderstood poems. Taken out of context lines such as “Good fences make good neighbours” and “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference” have been read as suggesting the neighbors should stay on their own side of the wall and that Frost is suggesting that the road “less traveled by” is somehow superior (when the whole poem argues that both paths are the same). Take a look back at the two poems. How does the narrator think neighbors should behave, how should they treat one another? Similarly, how different are the two paths and why does the narrator have such trouble choosing between them. Try to find a few specific lines that illustrate these ideas.

2) When has something you’ve said or written been misunderstood, especially, if what you said was taken out of context? Where have you seen this same idea repeated in TV shows or movies or in news reports and Youtube clips. Why is it important to understand the context––the events or lines of a poem––surrounding the quoted text or news sound byte?