Special English series (Mending wall🆑 10)

Robert Frost (1874-1963) was born in San Francisco on 26th March 1874.
His mother was a poetess and she named her son after great Scottish poet
Robert Burns.

Robert Frost lost his father when he was only eleven. His mother
took up a teaching job to support her family. At the age of 18, Frost started
Newspaper reporting and writing poetry. He made the crucial decision of his
life in 1912 by choosing poetry as his vocation. He was honoured with the
membership of the American Academy and the award of the Pulitzer Prize.

"Mending Wall" is a dramatic monologue. It is one of the most appreciated
poems of Robert Frost. In this poem he expressed his views and attitude towards
the wall separating his plot from his neighbour's. The poet sees no use in hav-
ing this wall but his neighbour is a traditionalist He is in favour of the wall.
He believes that, 'Good fences make good neighbours.'
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 outdoor 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
Why 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."

English EXPLANATION

There is no need to raise the wall. The

poet's apple trees will never get across

and eat the cones under his neighbour's

pine trees. However the neighbour says,

"Good fences make good neighbours".

The poet doesn't agree with his

neighbour's views. Through high hearted

talk he desires to put one idea in his

neighbour's head. There were no cows to

wander into the neighbour's field and

destroy the crop. Moreover, he would like

to know what it was that he was walling in

or walling out. Whom he would give

offence in case there was no wall. There is

something in nature that wants the wall

pulled down. He is not certain who or

what it could be. It could certainly not be

elves. The neighbour is bringing stones.

The poet wishes that like him his

neighbour also was not in favour of

raising the wall and mending it every

year.