The poem "The Mending Wall" is about two neighbors who meet each spring to repair the stone wall that separates their properties. The narrator does not see the purpose of the wall since there are no animals to keep in or out. When he suggests taking it down, his neighbor simply replies "Good fences make good neighbors." The neighbor enjoys maintaining the wall tradition passed down from his father.

1. Robert Frost: Literature Throughout the
Years

2. Interesting Facts:
 Born March 26, 1874
 Died January 29, 1963
 Poet, Play writer
 Received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry

3. The Mending Wall Poem
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it My apple trees will never get across 25
And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing: 5
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
I have come after them and made repair Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
Where they have left not one stone on a If I could put a notion in his head:
stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, “Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it 30
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
No one has seen them made or heard them
made, 10
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
But at spring mending-time we find them What I was walling in or walling out,
there. And to whom I was like to give offense.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, 35
And set the wall between us once again. That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
We keep the wall between us as we go. 15
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
And some are loaves and some so nearly He said it for himself. I see him there,
balls Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. 40
turned!” He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
We wear our fingers rough with handling
them. 20
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, He will not go behind his father’s saying,
One on a side. It comes to little more: And he likes having thought of it so well
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard. He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.” 45
First Half Second Half

4. Acquainted With the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
A luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night

5. The Road Not Taken
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 marked 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.

6. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

7. A Mending Wall
 This poem is about a stone wall that separates two houses. It
doesn’t only separate two houses but two people. In the spring,
the two neighbors meet to walk the wall and make whatever
repairs it needs. They talk while they repair the wall and become
good friends.
 The speaker in the poem does not want the wall anymore. The
speaker believes that there is no animals to contend to so there is
no reason for them to have a wall. He states that there are just
apple and pine trees. The speaker tries to talk the neighbor into
taking down the wall, but the neighbor will hear no such thing.

8. The Mending Wall
 He believes the old saying “Good fences make good
neighbors.” Whatever the speaker says about knocking
the wall down the neighbor comes back with.
 The neighbor really loves this wall and he wants to
keep it.

9. Acquainted with the Night
 This poem talks about a man who is lonely. He walks
up and down the isolated city streets at night because
he is so lonely. He has never found anything that
could comfort his loneliness even though he has
walked past the city limits and walked through every
city lane.
 He has even made contact with other people but will
not tell them how he is feeling. He believes that no
one will be able to understand what he is going
through.

10. The Road Not Taken
 In the poem, there are two different roads. It is the
type of road that Y’s off so it has a fork in the road.
The narrator is standing in the road right where it
begins to fork off. Both turns in the road are equally
worn and equally overlaid with leaves that are un-
trotted.
 The narrator choose to take one way in the fork of the
road, reassuring himself that he will travel the other
way another day. He knows in his mind that he is
telling himself this for no reason because it is unlikely
that he will travel that other side of the road.

11. The Road Not Taken
 At the end of the poem the narrator admits that
someday in the future he will recreate the scene with a
slight twist added. He will claim that he took the less-
traveled road. This poem has a different meaning to
me.