Analysis of Mending Wall
Robert Frost 1874 (San Francisco) – 1963 (Boston)
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."
Scheme | Abcdefgehifjklmnopqrstauvwoxybzm1 Oawxf2 3 4 5 e6 o |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011110101 1101011101 0101010001 0111011101 0111010101 1111010101 1111111101 11110101110 1101010111 1111111111 1111011111 111110101 0101111101 0101011101 1101011111 11010111011 0111011101 11110111110 11110110111 11101011101 1101011111 1101111101 1111111101 11110111010 1101110101 01011011111 1101110111 11010010110 1111010011 111111101 1111111111 0111011111 1111001101 011111111 1011110101 1111111111 11110100110 1111011111 1001110101 0111111101 1101011111 1111000111 11110111010 0111011111 1101110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,948 |
Words | 393 |
Sentences | 22 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 45 |
Lines Amount | 45 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,485 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 387 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 1:58 min read
- 843 Views
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