Robert Frost:

Mending Wall
Stopping by Woods on a snowy Evening
Road Not taken
Langston Hughes:
Harlem
Dream Deferred
Gods
Emily Dickinson:
I Heard a Fly Buzz
The Soul Selects its Own Society
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Nathanial Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
Earnest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises
Eugene O’Neil: Mourning Becomes Electra
Tennessee Williams: A Street Car Named Desire

Mending Wall
Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

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 neighbor 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 neighbors.'

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

'Why do they make good neighbors? 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 offense.

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 neighbors.'

From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1916, 1923, 1928,
1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1949, © 1969 by Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1936, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947,
1948, 1951, 1953, 1954, © 1956, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie
Frost Ballantine.

Mending Wall: Robert Frost is one of America’s most beloved

poets, and "Mending Wall" is one of his most popular poems.
This poem tells the tale of a rock wall which sits between two
properties in the countryside. Something continually destroys
this rock wall. A compelling aspect of "Mending Wall" is the
Frostian sense of mystery and loneliness. What begins as a
quest to discover the identity of the wall-destroyer, ends in a
meditation on the value of tradition and boundaries.

"Mending Wall" is the first poem in North of Boston, Frost’s

second book of poetry. This book was published when Frost
was in England, rubbing elbows with the likes of W.B. Yeats,
T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. Frost was a contemporary of many
modernist poetic movements, but he isn’t associated with any
particular group of poets. He marched to his own drummer,
and as a result, he garnered a good deal of criticism from the
literary world. But, it is precisely because he was such an
individual and his voice so original that Frost became so
beloved.

Born in San Francisco, Frost moved to Massachusetts at age

eleven following his father’s death. He attended both
Dartmouth College andHarvard University, but never earned a
college degree. He was, however, often invited to teach at
Dartmouth and Harvard later on in his life. You know you’re
good when you get to teach college students without having a
diploma yourself. After spending some time in England, Frost
befriended a lot of poetic giants, including William Butler
Yeats and Ezra Pound. Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes in his
lifetime, and he was asked to read a poem atPresident John F.
Kennedy’s inauguration. If you are to randomly choose one of
Frost’s poems and read it aloud on a busy street, we bet that a
bunch of people will recognize the poem instantly as Frost’s –
his sound and style is so unique.

MENDING WALL SUMMARY

The speaker immediately tells us that something is amiss in the countryside. Something in the
wide blue yonder does not like walls. He and his neighbor must get together every spring to walk
the whole length of the stone wall that separates their properties, and to fix places where the wall
has crumbled.

Then, our speaker begins to question the need for walls. He grows apples and his neighbor grows
pine trees. His neighbor says that "good fences make good neighbors." The speaker becomes a
bit mischievous in the spring weather, and wonders if he can try to make his neighbor reconsider
the wall. His neighbor looks like a menacing caveman as he puts a rock into the wall, and
repeats, "Good fences makes good neighbors."

Symbol Analysis

The wall is the shining star of this poem. It unites our speaker and his neighbor, but separates
them as well. As we hear the neighbor speak the proverb twice ("Good fences make good
neighbors"), we start to consider all of the wall-like structures in our life: fences, gates,
boundaries, lines, etc. The wall serves as a canvas upon which a lot of complex ideas about the
ways in which people, and their relationships with others, are painted and discussed.

 Line 13: The wall is ironic because, even though it separates the speaker from his neighbor, it
also brings them together every year.
 Line 14: "The wall" is present throughout the poem as an extended metaphor for the division that
exists between the speaker and his neighbor.
 Line 16: "To each" is a parallelism, as its repetition emphasizes the fact that the speaker and his
neighbor are on opposite side of the wall.
 Line 21: "Another kind of out-door game" becomes a metaphor for the wall-mending process
 Line: 27: The proverb "Good fences make good neighbors" is also a cliché; we hear it all the
time.
 Line 27: The proverb "Good fences make good neighbors" is a paradox when you contrast it with
the first words of the poem, "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall." In the first case,
barriers are good things; in the second, they are not.
 Line 35: "Offence" is a pun – it sounds like "a fence."

Nature seems to act as the third wheel in this poem – the silent character swirling around the
speaker and his neighbor. Although he doesn’t explicitly describe the landscape, we see it very
clearly, and we seem to know what the seasons are like in this part of the world. Similarly,
tradition seems to be the silent subject over which the speaker and his neighbor wrestle. The
neighbor upholds his ancestors’ way of life, while our speaker questions this philosophy.

 Line 5: "Hunters" are a metaphor both for the speaker and for us (the readers), all of
whom try to get at something (even if we don’t know exactly what that something is).
 Line 25: The apple trees are momentarily personified, as the speaker claims that they will
never wander across and eat the pine cones on his neighbor’s property.
 Line 51: The speaker uses a simile and likens his neighbor to "an old-stone savage
armed," or a caveman ready for battle.
MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD
Our speaker takes great pains to describe the setting of this New England countryside. He tells us
right off the bat, "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," (lines 1-3). In doing so, he points a big, fat
finger toward nature. Nature seems to be the unnamed culprit who, in addition to hunters,
continues to destroy the wall. As the poem unfolds, we learn how spring (and all of its feverish
weather and spirit of new life) makes our speaker a bit mischievous. We see in this poem the
sharp contrast between the natural and the artificial, nature and man.

TRADITION AND CUSTOMS

When the neighbor first says, "Good fences make good neighbors," we know that we’ve heard
this saying before. When he echoes it at the end of the poem, we realize that this saying was
passed down to our neighbor from his father. In this way, the neighbor represents tradition and
custom, relying on the past to serve as his guide. The speaker describes his neighbor as "an old-
stone savage," making us think of a Neanderthal or caveman. In so doing, our speaker seems to
challenge old-school methods, and paints a picture of the wall as antiquated or uncivilized.

EXPLORATION
When we talk about "exploration" here, we don’t necessarily mean Christopher Columbus or
Amerigo Vespucci. Our speaker explores uncharted waters as he begins to question why there
needs to be a wall between his property and his neighbor’s property. Our speaker challenges the
old-school values that his neighbor embodies.

“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 5

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. 1 0
The only other sounds 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, 1 5
And miles to go before I sleep.

Summary

On the surface, this poem is simplicity itself. The speaker is stopping by some woods on
a snowy evening. He or she takes in the lovely scene in near-silence, is tempted to stay
longer, but acknowledges the pull of obligations and the considerable distance yet to be
traveled before he or she can rest for the night.

Form

The poem consists of four (almost) identically constructed stanzas. Each line is iambic,
with four stressed syllables:

Within the four lines of each stanza, the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme. The third
line does not, but it sets up the rhymes for the next stanza. For example, in the third
stanza, queer, near, and year all rhyme, but lake rhymes with shake, mistake, and flake in
the following stanza.

The notable exception to this pattern comes in the final stanza, where the third line
rhymes with the previous two and is repeated as the fourth line.

Do not be fooled by the simple words and the easiness of the rhymes; this is a very
difficult form to achieve in English without debilitating a poem’s content with forced
rhymes.
 Commentary

This is a poem to be marveled at and taken for granted. Like a big stone, like a body of
water, like a strong economy, however it was forged it seems that, once made, it has
always been there. Frost claimed that he wrote it in a single nighttime sitting; it just came
to him. Perhaps one hot, sustained burst is the only way to cast such a complete object, in
which form and content, shape and meaning, are alloyed inextricably. One is tempted to
read it, nod quietly in recognition of its splendor and multivalent meaning, and just move
on. But one must write essays. Or study guides.

Like the woods it describes, the poem is lovely but entices us with dark depths—of
interpretation, in this case. It stands alone and beautiful, the account of a man stopping by
woods on a snowy evening, but gives us a come-hither look that begs us to load it with a
full inventory of possible meanings. We protest, we make apologies, we point to the
dangers of reading poetry in this way, but unlike the speaker of the poem, we cannot
resist.

The last two lines are the true culprits. They make a strong claim to be the most
celebrated instance of repetition in English poetry. The first “And miles to go before I
sleep” stays within the boundaries of literalness set forth by the rest of the poem. We may
suspect, as we have up to this point, that the poem implies more than it says outright, but
we can’t insist on it; the poem has gone by so fast, and seemed so straightforward. Then
comes the second “And miles to go before I sleep,” like a soft yet penetrating gong; it can
be neither ignored nor forgotten. The sound it makes is “Ahhh.” And we must read the
verses again and again and offer trenchant remarks and explain the “Ahhh” in words far
inferior to the poem. For the last “miles to go” now seems like life; the last “sleep” now
seems like death.

The basic conflict in the poem, resolved in the last stanza, is between an attraction toward
the woods and the pull of responsibility outside of the woods. What do woods represent?
Something good? Something bad? Woods are sometimes a symbol for wildness,
madness, the pre-rational, the looming irrational. But these woods do not seem
particularly wild. They are someone’s woods, someone’s in particular—the owner lives
in the village. But that owner is in the village on this, the darkest evening of the year—so
would any sensible person be. That is where the division seems to lie, between the village
(or “society,” “civilization,” “duty,” “sensibility,” “responsibility”) and the woods (that
which is beyond the borders of the village and all it represents). If the woods are not
particularly wicked, they still possess the seed of the irrational; and they are, at night,
dark—with all the varied connotations of darkness.

Part of what is irrational about the woods is their attraction. They are restful, seductive,
lovely, dark, and deep—like deep sleep, like oblivion. Snow falls in downy flakes, like a
blanket to lie under and be covered by. And here is where many readers hear dark
undertones to this lyric. To rest too long while snow falls could be to lose one’s way, to
lose the path, to freeze and die. Does this poem express a death wish, considered and then
discarded? Do the woods sing a siren’s song? To be lulled to sleep could be truly
dangerous. Is allowing oneself to be lulled akin to giving up the struggle of prudence and
self-preservation? Or does the poem merely describe the temptation to sit and watch
beauty while responsibilities are forgotten—to succumb to a mood for a while?

The woods sit on the edge of civilization; one way or another, they draw the speaker
away from it (and its promises, its good sense). “Society” would condemn stopping here
in the dark, in the snow—it is ill advised. The speaker ascribes society’s reproach to the
horse, which may seem, at first, a bit odd. But the horse is a domesticated part of the
civilized order of things; it is the nearest thing to society’s agent at this place and time.
And having the horse reprove the speaker (even if only in the speaker’s imagination)
helps highlight several uniquely human features of the speaker’s dilemma. One is the
regard for beauty (often flying in the face of practical concern or the survival instinct);
another is the attraction to danger, the unknown, the dark mystery; and the third—
perhaps related but distinct—is the possibility of the death wish, of suicide.

Not that we must return too often to that darkest interpretation of the poem. Beauty alone
is a sufficient siren; a sufficient protection against her seduction is an unwillingness to
give up on society despite the responsibilities it imposes. The line “And miles to go
before I sleep” need not imply burden alone; perhaps the ride home will be lovely, too.
Indeed, the line could be read as referring to Frost’s career as a poet, and at this time he
had plenty of good poems left in him.

“The Road Not Taken”

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Complete Text

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; 5

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, 1 0

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. 1 5

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. 2 0

Summary

The speaker stands in the woods, considering a fork in the road. Both ways are equally
worn and equally overlaid with un-trodden leaves. The speaker chooses one, telling
himself that he will take the other another day. Yet he knows it is unlikely that he will
have the opportunity to do so. And he admits that someday in the future he will recreate
the scene with a slight twist: He will claim that he took the less-traveled road.

Form

“The Road Not Taken” consists of four stanzas of five lines. The rhyme scheme is
ABAAB; the rhymes are strict and masculine, with the notable exception of the last line
(we do not usually stress the -ence of difference). There are four stressed syllables per
line, varying on an iambic tetrameter base.

Commentary

This has got to be among the best-known, most-often-misunderstood poems on the

planet. Several generations of careless readers have turned it into a piece of Hallmark
happy-graduation-son, seize-the-future puffery. Cursed with a perfect marriage of form
and content, arresting phrase wrought from simple words, and resonant metaphor, it
seems as if “The Road Not Taken” gets memorized without really being read. For this it
has died the cliché’s un-death of trivial immortality.

But you yourself can resurrect it from zombie-hood by reading it—not with imagination,
even, but simply with accuracy. Of the two roads the speaker says “the passing there /
Had worn them really about the same.” In fact, both roads “that morning lay / In leaves
no step had trodden black.” Meaning: Neither of the roads is less traveled by. These are
the facts; we cannot justifiably ignore the reverberations they send through the easy
aphorisms of the last two stanzas.
One of the attractions of the poem is its archetypal dilemma, one that we instantly
recognize because each of us encounters it innumerable times, both literally and
figuratively. Paths in the woods and forks in roads are ancient and deep-seated metaphors
for the lifeline, its crises and decisions. Identical forks, in particular, symbolize for us the
nexus of free will and fate: We are free to choose, but we do not really know beforehand
what we are choosing between. Our route is, thus, determined by an accretion of choice
and chance, and it is impossible to separate the two.

This poem does not advise. It does not say, “When you come to a fork in the road, study
the footprints and take the road less traveled by” (or even, as Yogi Berra enigmatically
quipped, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it”). Frost’s focus is more
complicated. First, there is no less-traveled road in this poem; it isn’t even an option.
Next, the poem seems more concerned with the question of how the concrete present
(yellow woods, grassy roads covered in fallen leaves) will look from a future vantage
point.

The ironic tone is inescapable: “I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and
ages hence.” The speaker anticipates his own future insincerity—his need, later on in life,
to rearrange the facts and inject a dose of Lone Ranger into the account. He knows that he
will be inaccurate, at best, or hypocritical, at worst, when he holds his life up as an
example. In fact, he predicts that his future self will betray this moment of decision as if
the betrayal were inevitable. This realization is ironic and poignantly pathetic. But the
“sigh” is critical. The speaker will not, in his old age, merely gather the youth about him
and say, “Do what I did, kiddies. I stuck to my guns, took the road less traveled by, and
that has made all the difference.” Rather, he may say this, but he will sigh first; for he
won’t believe it himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind will remain the image of
yellow woods and two equally leafy paths.

Ironic as it is, this is also a poem infused with the anticipation of remorse. Its title is not
“The Road Less Traveled” but “The Road Not Taken.” Even as he makes a choice (a
choice he is forced to make if does not want to stand forever in the woods, one for which
he has no real guide or definitive basis for decision-making), the speaker knows that he
will second-guess himself somewhere down the line—or at the very least he will wonder
at what is irrevocably lost: the impossible, unknowable Other Path. But the nature of the
decision is such that there is no Right Path—just the chosen path and the other path.
What are sighed for ages and ages hence are not so much the wrong decisions as the
moments of decision themselves—moments that, one atop the other, mark the passing of
a life. This is the more primal strain of remorse.

Thus, to add a further level of irony, the theme of the poem may, after all, be “seize the
day.” But a more nuanced carpe diem, if you please.