sonnet 129

“Mending Wall�Eby Robert Frost is a poem in which the characteristics of vocabulary, rhythm and other aspects of poetic technique combine in a fashion that articulates, in detail, the experience and the opposing convictions that the poem describes and discusses. The ordinariness of the rural activity is presented in specific description, and as so often is found in Frost’s poems, the unprepossessing undertaking has much larger implications. Yet his consideration of these does …

…force that sends a powerful emotion, a groundswell under the barriers that human beings create around themselves in an attempt to break these barriers down. Mending Wall has a man who both builds and repairs the wall, as well as works to topple the wall. He makes boundaries while at the same time trying to break them. That’s part of what makes this poem universally acceptable and enjoyable. Frost has described all of mankind.