Critical overviews

“Mending Wall”

(1914)

The speaker begins the poem by noting that walls—especially those marking divisions of property—are difficult to maintain and seem destined to fall: They inevitably collapse, are undermined by natural processes, or are vandalized by humans. Even so, when the speaker tries to convince his neighbor that the wall dividing their rural properties is not worth repairing and maintaining, his neighbor insists, “Good fences make good neighbors, ” and so each spring the two of them repair the wall that not only separates them but also marks their continuing connection.

As many of Frost’s poems do, this one has a rural setting and focuses on relations between country neighbors and indeed on the concept of neighborliness itself. The two men in the poem are simultaneously connected but separated, linked but also distinct, and in that sense they symbolize the common human condition, for in Frost’s works human beings are often outwardly aligned yet also fundamentally alone. The speaker’s desire to cease repairing the wall can thus be seen, in one sense, as reflecting a deeper desire for a more fundamental kind of friendship and communion, but part of the paradox of the poem is that it is the yearly ritual of repairing the wall that helps bind these two men conversation and community. Fixing the wall gives them a common project; it gives them something to do together and something to talk about, and it does not seem an accident that the only people mentioned in the poem are two men. Two women would probably find it easier to talk to one another; two families (especially two sets of children) would probably feel less separated by the wall than the male speaker seems to feel. The fact that no wives or children are mentioned enhances the sense of loneliness and isolation that is one of the underlying themes not only of this poem but of many of Frost’s works. The wall, paradoxically, is the means by which these two men are both divided and united. While some analysts argue that Frost sides with the speaker’s skepticism about maintaining the wall, and while other commentators contend that Frost endorses the neighbor’s commitment to repairing the wall, most critics suggest that the poem (like the wall itself) is ambivalent—that Frost lets each man have his say, sees merit in the arguments of each, and finally (as so often in his poems) leaves the issue unresolved.

Whatever the final “meaning” of this poem, its particular techniques are often memorable and effective. It opens, for instance, with a blunt, plain statement of theme that the rest of the poem will then proceed to complicate and perhaps even undermine (just as the seemingly solid wall itself is undermined by natural and human forces). The opening statement, like much of the rest of the poem, is typical of Frost’s writing in its simple, common diction; critics have noted how few of Frost’s words (here and elsewhere) are derived from Latin roots and how many can be traced to Anglo-Saxon origins—a trait that helps give Frost’s phrasing its air of blunt directness. To say this, however, is not to imply that the poem lacks subtlety or craft, for indeed part of the impressiveness of Frost’s achievement is his ability to combine apparent plainness with understated art. In the poem’s first few lines, for example, he parallels and juxtaposes two emphatic verbs— sends in line 2 and the similarly positioned spills in line 3—to stress destructive actions from below and from above, the one associated with cold and the other with heat. Meanwhile, the hyphenated phrase “frozen-groundswell” mimics the very swelling it describes, while the words gaps and pass in line 4 combine both assonance (repetition of vowels) and alliteration (repetition of consonants). In all these ways and in many others, therefore, Frost shows a keen attention not only to the “plot” and “theme” of the work but to its rhythms, structure, and sounds; he never forgets that the importance of a poem lies less in its meaning than in its craft.

Further craft is demonstrated later in the poem, for example, in its heavy use of parallel phrasing (as in lines 10, 14–15, 16, and 17). Such parallelism, by its very nature, reinforces the poem’s key idea of things that are similar yet separate, connected but distinct. Yet Frost employs numerous other devices to prevent his plain diction and blank verse from seeming merely mundane or prosaic. He sometimes uses near-rhymes, for example, to keep the poem sounding “poetic” (as in the way the word out at the end of line 33 echoes the word cows at the end of line 31, or in the way the word trees at the end of line 42 echoes the word me at the end of the preceding line). Or he uses metaphors, as in the nicely succinct statement “He is all pine and I am apple orchard”. And he uses a sly and humorous play on words, suggesting that to build a wall is to risk giving “offense” (i.e., a fence). In all these ways and in many others, Frost gives the poem the kind of richness we associate with poetry more than with any other genre, but he does so in ways that keep this work (like much of the rest of his writing) simultaneously unobtrusive yet still intriguing.

“Birches”

(1916)

The speaker notes that white birch trees, especially when they are bent, present a striking contrast to nearby darker trees, and although he would like to think that playing boys have bent the trees by climbing in them and grabbing their branches to descend back to the ground, he knows that the branches have actually been bent by ice storms that have weighed them down and forever altered their shapes. After describing the storms and their effects, he returns to his fantasy of boys climbing the trees and bending their branches by holding them to return to solid ground. Musing on life’s troubles, and recalling that he himself once swung from birch trees, he wishes that he could now climb toward heaven but then descend gently back to earth on bending branches.

As so often in his long poems, Frost here uses blank (or unrhymed) verse consisting mostly of 10 syllables per line, although sometimes he uses 11 syllables and occasionally 12. The first four lines of the work use perfectly regular iambic pentameter meter, in which the even syllables are accented and the odd syllables are not. Afterward, however, the meter of the poem becomes much less predictable and much more erratic; in a poem that deals so insistently with motion, movement, and literal swinging, this kind of frequent departure from metrical regularity is often effective, allowing Frost to emphasize key syllables, words, or phrases, as in the heavily accented phrase “As ice storms do”, or the word Loaded, where the first syllable receives unusual stress, or the heavily emphasized phrase “hung limp”, where the rhythm mimics the sense. Frost, in other words, shows his usual skill in orchestrating the sounds of a poem to reflect and reinforce its meaning, and the fact that the meter in this work is so unpredictable helps contribute to the heavily conversational style of the lyric—a quality also enhanced by the absence of rhyme, the frequent use of enjambed (or run-on) lines, the repeated use of unaccented final syllables, the repeated references to “I, ” the stress on personal memories and personal aspirations, and the implicit inclusion of readers themselves in the experiences the poem describes (as in the your of line 45). The structure of the poem seems loose rather than rigidly patterned, as the speaker himself explicitly concedes in lines 21–22: The work begins by offering one possible (and fanciful) explanation of the bent birches (ll. 1–3), then suddenly shifts to a more realistic explanation (ll. 4–20), then shifts back to fantasy that also seems to combine elements of personal memory (ll. 21–40), then makes the emphasis on personal memory explicit (ll. 41–49), and then concludes by focusing on wishes and hopes for the future (ll. 50–59). The speaker expresses highly personal recollections and aspirations, but obviously he also speaks for any person who has ever enjoyed the carefree play of childhood, or experienced the disappointments and worries of adulthood, or longed for a way of recapturing simple joys in the midst of life’s complexities. In the poem’s last line, Frost moves closer than he usually does to stating an explicit theme, lesson, or “moral, ” but for the most part the speaker resists any didactic impulse. Ironically, though, by speaking so convincingly of and for himself, he also speaks for numerous readers, as the enduring popularity of this poem attests.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

(1923)

The speaker, while traveling in a horse-drawn conveyance on a road beside a forested area, pauses to contemplate the vision of the woods “filling up with snow, ” but as he stops, he also thinks about the owner of the woods (who lives in the village) and about the presumably puzzled reaction of his own horse. Finally, responding to the apparent impatience of the horse as well as to his own sense of obligation, the speaker decides to continue his journey and leave the woods behind. This poem is probably Frost’s most famous and best beloved work, and it is one of the poems on which he certainly hoped and thought his reputation would rest. It has many of the hallmarks of a “typical” Frost lyric: the plain, simple, often monosyllabic language; the rural setting; the seemingly straightforward and uncomplicated “plot”; the thoughtful but understated speaker; and the theme of man’s relationship with nature and man’s position in the universe. The poem invites serious reflection but is not preachy or didactic; part of its impact derives from Frost’s willingness to let readers draw their own conclusions about the ultimate “meaning” of the work. Is the speaker afflicted with a “death wish”? Does he in fact contemplate suicide? Is he tempted—at least temporarily—to abandon his responsibilities? Does he wish (at least for a time) that such responsibilities did not exist? Are his journey and his contemplated sleep merely literal, or are they metaphorical (implying, perhaps, the larger journey of life and the final sleep of death)? Frost’s poem intriguingly raises many such questions without ever providing clear or simple answers, and it is partly the poem’s ability to seem simultaneously simple and complex that makes it so hauntingly memorable.

If one effect of the poem is to lull us into a contemplative mood so that we share in the speaker’s own thoughtfulness, that effect is partly the result of the strikingly regular (but strangely subtle) iambic rhythm. In every single line of the work, the even syllables are accented and the odd syllables are not, yet the poem never sounds tediously predictable or metronomic. Likewise, every line of the work consists of exactly eight syllables—no more and no fewer—and yet (once more) the poem seems anything but stale or monotonous. Frost has chosen the perfect meter and rhythm for a low-key, quiet, and contemplative work such as this, and his heavy use of monosyllabic words (only 18 of the poem’s 108 words consist of two or more syllables, and only one of those words is trisyllabic) is completely appropriate to a speaker whose character seems as direct and forthright as his language. At the same time, despite its highly unadorned and unelaborate phrasing and despite its extraordinarily regular meter, the poem also has an exceptionally unusual rhyme scheme: aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd. Numerous commentators (including Frost himself) have discussed the inventiveness of this pattern of rhyme and have called special attention to the way the pattern is both broken and completed in the final line, where the unexpected repetition (not only of a rhyme word but of an entire line) gives the conclusion exceptional emphasis. Thus the form of the poem (which is simultaneously simple and complex) mirrors many other aspects of the work, for the speaker himself seems, on one level, an uncomplicated rural character while also seeming both highly self-conscious and unusually contemplative. Similarly, the landscape, too, seems both predictably mundane and highly symbolic. These woods, for instance, seem both a credible forest and yet also a symbol of something mysterious and intriguing, while the snow and cold seem both literal and metaphoric. Likewise, the journey seems both real and emblematic: The speaker moves through a believable rural landscape, but he also progresses along the larger road of life itself.