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1. Mending Wall
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,
boulder : 둥근 돌, 바위, 볼더
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
abreast : 따라잡기, 뒤처지지 않기, 빠르게
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."
--------
담장 고치기
담장을 싫어하는 무엇이 있다.
그것은 담장 아래쪽의 땅을 얼어 부풀게 하고
위쪽의 돌멩이들을 햇빛 속에 무너뜨려서,
두 사람도 너끈히 지날 수 있는 틈을 만든다.
사냥꾼들이 낸 틈은 이와는 다른 틈이다.
사냥꾼들이 돌 위의 돌을 빼낸 곳을 뒤따라가서
보수한 것은 나였지만, 그들이 그렇게 한 것은
단지 숨은 토끼를 몰아내어 짖는 사냥개들을
즐겁게 하려는 것이었다. 내가 말하는 틈이란,
아무도 보거나 들은 적도 없는데,
봄철 보수 때만 되면 으레 나있는 틈들이다.
나는 언덕 너머의 이웃에게 알린다.
그리고 어느 날 우리는 만나서 경계선을 따라가며
우리 사이에 다시 한 번 담장을 쌓는다.
일을 하면서도 우리는 서로 간에 담장을 유지하니,
각자에게 떨어진 돌멩이들은 각자가 책임진다.
어떤 것은 빵 덩어리 같고 어떤 것은 거의 공과 같으니
우리는 그것들의 균형을 맞추려고 주문을 외어야 한다.
“제발 우리가 돌아설 때까지 그대로 있어다오!"
우리의 손가락은 돌을 다루느라 거칠어진다.
오, 이것은 한 편에 한 사람씩 겨루는,
또 다른 종류의 야외 게임이구나. 그 이상이 아니다.
그의 것은 모두 소나무이고 내 것은 사과밭이니,
사실 이곳은 담장이 필요한 곳이 아니다.
내 사과나무가 건너가서
그의 솔방울을 따먹을 리 없다고, 나는 말한다.
그는 이렇게 말할 뿐이다, “담장이 튼튼해야 이웃사이가 좋지요.”
봄은 나의 장난기여서, 난 그의 머릿속에
어떤 생각을 집어넣을 수 없을지 생각해본다.
왜 담장이 튼튼해야 이웃사이가 좋은가요? 소가 있는 곳에서나
그런 것 아닌가요? 하지만 여기는 소가 없지 않소.
내가 담장으로 무엇을 들이고 무엇을 내몰며,
그리고 누구의 기분을 상하게 할 것인지
담장을 쌓기 전에 생각해보고 싶군요.
담장을 싫어하는 무엇이 있어서,
자꾸만 담장을 무너뜨리니 말이요.” 나는 그에게
"요정들의 짓이지요.”라고 말할 수도 있지만,
딱히 요정의 짓도 아니다. 그리고 나는 또
그 사람 스스로 그렇게 말하기를 바란다.
양손에 돌대가리를 꽉 쥐고 오는 그가 보인다.
그는 마치 구석기시대의 무장한 야만인 같다.
그는 그저 어두운 숲과 나무 그늘이아니라,
진짜 암흑 속에서 움직이는 것처럼 보인다.
그는 선조의 말씀을 어기는 사람이 아니라서,
때마침 그 말씀이 생각난 것이 흐뭇한 듯이
다시 말한다, “담장이 튼튼해야 이웃사이가 좋지요.”
-신재실 옮김-
단상(斷想): 「담장 고치기」를 실존의 각도에서 읽는 다면 "담장"은 인간 성취의 상징이다. 봄마다 연례적으로 실시되는 담장 고치기라는 노동의 메타포를 통해 파괴에 대항하는 부단한 구축의 행위를 실존의 의미로 규정하고 있기 때문이다. "담장을 싫어하는 무엇이 있다"는 유명한 구절로 시작되는 첫 11행은 담장이 무너지는 이유를 생각한다. 봄철의 고칠 때만 되면 두 사람이 지나도 될 틈을 담에서 발견하게 되는데 이는 대체 누구의 소행이며 어떤 목적이 있는가? 화자는 겨울의 동토(凍土)로 인한 자연현상임을 알고 있으면서도 인간의 성취를 무너뜨리려는 어떤 대항세력을 상정한다. 이런 세력에 대항하여 담장을 쌓는 것이 인간임을 확인하는 일이다. 이 시의 화자는 담장이 허물어지는 것을 단순한 물리현상으로 보지 않고 인간의 구축의지를 시험하려는 어떤 힘의 작용으로 보기 때문에 봄이 되면 솔선해서 이웃에 알리고 담장 고치기는 일에 나선다.
대등한 입장에서 임무를 수행하는 광경을 약간 해학적인 어조로 그리고 있다. 그러나 이 해학 속에는 인간은 본래 "개별적" 존재라는 진지한 뜻이 담겨 있다. "우리 사이에 다시 한 번 담장을 쌓고" 있는 것도 서로의 "개성"을 침해하지 않는다는 약정의 표현이기도 하다. 중요한 것은 자신의 개별적 직분에 대한 이해와 일에 임하는 태도이다. 쉬운 일이 없지만 즐겁게 수행하는 적극성이다. 주문(呪文)을 외워야 할 정도로 제자리에 올려놓기가 힘든 제멋대로 된 돌멩이들이기 때문에 손가락도 거칠어지는 힘든 노동이지만 표현의 해학성이 뒷받침하고 있듯이 화자는 "또 다른 종류의 야외게임"으로 생각하고 즐기고 있다. "담장"의 의미와 노동의 의의를 이해하고 있기 때문이다.
담장의 의미가 이웃의 가축을 막아내는 담장 본래의 배타적 공리성으로 끝난다면 "그의 것은 모두 소나무이고 내 것은 사과밭이니” 이곳의 담장은 실상 필요 없다. 화자는 이런 문제를 그의 이웃에게 제기하지만 그것은 이웃의 심성을 시험하려는 심술궂은 생각에서 나온 것으로, 어쩌면 그의 예상대로 이웃은 "담장이 튼튼해야 이웃 사이가 좋지요"라는 조상전래의 인습에 매달릴 뿐 자신이 하고 있는 노동의 의의를 이해하지 못하고 있다. 화자는 이웃의 머릿속에 어떤 생각을 집어 넣어줄 수 없을까 생각하지만 자문(自問)으로 끝나고 만다.
봄의 "장난기"는 그저 심술로 끝나는 것이 아니다. 겨울의 소외와는 달리 적어도 의사소통의 상대를 찾고 삶의 한 양상을 생각해 보는 그런 장난기이다. "내가 담장으로 무엇을 들이고 무엇을 내몰며,/ 그리고 누구의 기분을 상하게 할 것인지"라는 자문(自問)은 담장의 전통적 의미에서 탈피하려는 화자의 심리가 배어 있다. 담장을 적대적 태도의 상징으로 보는 것이 아니라 오히려 "개별적 특성"의 상호 존중의 표상으로 생각하는 태도이다.
화자가 연례적인 담장 고치기에 나서는 것은 이웃 사이에 배타적인 장벽을 쌓기 위해서가 아니다. 담장의 필요성이 실제적으로 있건 없건, 화자가 담장 고치기라는 즐거운 “야외 게임”에 솔선해서 나선다는 사실에 주목할 필요가 있다. 담장 자체가 좋은 이웃을 만들지 않는다 하더라도, 서로 만나서 즐겁게 담장을 고치는 행위가 좋은 이웃이 되는 소통과 대화의 기회가 될 수 있기 때문이다. 하지만 “담장이 튼튼해야 이웃사이가 좋지요”를 되풀이하는 이웃의 인습적 사고와 대립적 행동은 담장 자체만큼이나 답답하고 편협하다. 화자와 이웃 간에는 보이지 않는 생각의 담장이 버티고 있는 것이다. 물리적 담장을 싫어하는 “무엇”은 자연이다. 정신적 담을 싫어하는 그 “무엇”은 화자의 “장난기”이다.
화자의 “장난기”는 정신적 담장을 무너뜨리고 싶은 일탈의 충동이다. 그것은 “요정‘이다. 인간사에 뛰어들어 바람 같은 힘을 발휘하기도 하는 상상력이다. 요정은 마력을 발휘하지만, 일탈의 상상력은 딱히 그렇지 못하는 경우도 있다. 이웃의 상투적 언행을 무너뜨리려는 화자의 “장난기”는 꽉 막힌 이웃의 정신적 담장을 무너뜨리지 못한다. 이웃은 이웃 간의 정신적 담장을 무너뜨리고 싶은 장난기 어린 화자의 “요정”을 스스로 보지 못하고 여전히 구석기 시대의 야만인처럼 무장하고 무지(無知)에서 움직인다. 그리고 그는 다시 한 번 “담장이 튼튼해야 이웃 사이가 좋지요”라고 말한다.
개인이건 국가이건 각자 개성을 확보한 다음에야 대등한 왕래가 가능한 것이다. 이런 의미에서 담은 오히려 소통의 대전제가 되는 것이다. 프로스트는「시에 의한 교육」(Education by Poetry)에서 이렇게 말한다. “보시라! 먼저 나는 한 개인이 되고 싶습니다. 그리고 나는 당신도 한 개인이 되기를 원합니다. 그 다음에야 우리는 당신이 만족할 만큼 상호적일 수 있습니다. 우리는 서로의 코를 잡아당길 수 있습니다―갖가지 일을 할 수 있습니다. 그러나 무엇보다도, 당신은 개성을 가져야 합니다.”대등한 개성의 수립 다음에 대등한 상호 관계를 기대할 수 있다.
담장 고치기는 이웃 간의 만남을 제공하는 계기가 되기도 한다. 그러나 담의 옛 가치를 맹목적으로 추종하며 무지에서 움직이는 이웃의 경직된 태도, 즉 개성의 부재는 이웃 간의 소통의 발판을 스스로 경직시키는 장애요소이다. 이웃은 “양손에 돌대가리를 꽉 쥐고, … 구석기 시대의 무장한 야만인처럼" 전투적 자세로 담장을 쌓고 있다. 그에게 담장은 소통의 전제가 아니고 배척의 장벽이다. 이러한 노동은 즐거움이 될 수 없는 노역으로 진정한 성취는 불가능하다.
담장 고치기의 즐거움은 담장이 좋은 이웃을 만들 수 있기 때문이 아니다. 담장이 이웃 사이를 좋게 하지는 않더라도 서로 만나 담장을 쌓는 일 자체가 그렇게 할 수 있다. 이 “야외 게임”에서 담장 이상의 더 많은 것이 만들어진다. 이 시에서 화자가 바라는 이웃과의 의사소통은 결국 실패로 끝났지만 노동의 의의를 합리적 사고와 사랑에 의한 개별적 질서의 구축과 이를 계기로 한 인간 상호간의 관계수립의 지향에서 찾으려는 태도는 의미심장하다.
-신재실 씀-
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The idea for “Mending Wall” had come to him while in Scotland. Among the many people whom Frost had met in Kingsbarns was J. C. Smith, an inspector of schools from Edinburgh with a strong literary bent. Smith later recalled walking in the Fifeshire countryside with Frost and seeing “dry stone dykes” that reminded the New Englander of similar walls that had once absorbed so much of his time. Back in Beaconsfield, Frost’s mind turned to a particular wall on the Derry farm that “I hadn’t mended in several years and which must be in a terrible condition.” “Mending Wall” was written in the fall of 1913, and it “contrasts two types of people,” as Frost later said. The poet-narrator observes rather quaintly: “He is all pine and I am apple orchard.” The poem centers on the repair of a wall by two farmers, an activity initiated by the speaker:
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.
The poem rapidly becomes metaphorical. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” it opens, and the line is repeated later as the narrator contemplates his own mischievous nature, which urges him to suggest to his neighbor that elves are responsible for the undoing of this wall. The taciturn neighbor will only mutter: “Good fences make good neighbors,” a proverbial line quoted often in almanacs of the nineteenth century.This catchy notion has often given readers pause, as Frost noted in 1962: “People are frequently misunderstanding it or misinterpreting it. The secret of what it means I keep.”
The secret is not so hard to fathom. Frost often emphasized the need for boundaries taken as liberating rather than confining limits. Richard Poirier observes that the real significance of “Mending Wall” is “that it suggests how much for Frost freedom is contingent upon some degree of restriction. More specifically, it can be said that restrictions, or forms, are a precondition for expression. Without them, even nature ceases to offer itself up for a reading.” Everywhere, in language and nature, Frost finds—or self-consciously erects—barriers that, as Marion Montgomery has noted, “serve as a framework for mutual understanding and respect.”
As in so many of Frost’s best poems, various levels in the poem may be discerned, and these are often contradictory. This is especially so if one attempts to find an autobiographical strain in the poem. Frost himself made this point in later comments, as to Charles Foster at Bread Loaf in 1938, when he maintained: “I am both wall-builder and wall-destroyer.”
In “Mending Wall,” it is, importantly, the speaker, not the “old-stone savage” living next door, who insists on the act of wall building. If hunters should come along at any time and undo the wall, he is quick to fix it. And he insists on the yearly ritual, as if civilization depends upon the collective activity of making barriers. There is a lot of “making” and “mending” in this poem, and it is more than a mere wall that is erected. One senses a profound commitment to the act of creating community in the speaker, who allies his voice with the “something” that sends frozen groundswells under the wall to disrupt it. (One could, perhaps, make something of the fact that the neighbor is capable of saying nothing himself except an old proverb.) The energy of the speaker’s imagination unsettles and builds at the same time, a paradoxical notion that would seem to lie at the heart of the creative process itself.
from "Robert Frost, A Life"
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Some Poems of Robert Frost(1969) - William Osborne
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https://youtu.be/JWJTTuxbyT8?list=OLAK5uy_l4k2ObJUMCEroFFmDz0oExtPCH4SnEsu0
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“Mending Wall” (1914)
The opening poem of Frost’s hailed second collec
tion, North of Boston, “Mending Wall” is one of his
most popular and celebrated poems. Much anthol
ogized, the poem has almost come to symbolize
Frost, for good or ill. On a visit to Moscow in 1962,
nearly 50 years after the poem’s first publication,
Frost said, “People are frequently misunderstanding
[the poem] or misinterpreting it. The secret of what
it means I keep.” Providing a bit of a hint, he also
once explained that the poem contrasted two types
of people: “I’ve got a man there; he’s both a wall
builder and a wall toppler. He makes boundaries
and he breaks boundaries. That’s man” (“On Tak
ing Poetry”).
The poem opens with the statement, “Some
thing there is that doesn’t love a wall,” and Frost’s
readers are left to speculate for the remainder of
the poem precisely what that something is. Winter
does not love a wall, we learn in the second line; it
creates gaps in the wall. The ground swells and the
less securely placed boulders tumble off. The
speaker explains that hunters are also sometimes
responsible for the gaps. When they are chasing a
rabbit to “please the yelping dogs,” but mostly
themselves, they too have been known to send
boulders tumbling.
The gaps are mysterious, however. The winter
and the hunter are suggestions: No one ever actu
ally hears them or sees the gaps made. It is not until
spring, when the speaker and his neighbor ritualis
tically meet at the wall for mending, that they dis
cover the gaps and set about filling them. The two
walk together, the wall between them, replacing
the boulders that have been left behind during the
winter when there has been no cause to venture
out to the wall.
Mending a wall takes work, but there is also a
sort of sorcery to it. Sometimes one even needs to
cast a spell to make the boulders balance just so:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
A game is made of mending the wall; it becomes
almost a country version of bowls. The speaker
remarks that mending the wall essentially “comes to
little more” than a game, since the wall itself is unnec
essary. Neither neighbor has on his property anything
that would disturb the other’s. One has pine trees
and one has apple, but neither has livestock. As the
speaker teasingly tells his neighbor: “My apple trees
will never get across / And eat the cones under his
pines.” The wall mending is not about keeping things
out, the speaker explains, raising the question
whether it is about keeping things in.
The other neighbor is cryptic when the speaker,
the forthright one, questions him about the pur
pose of the wall. He simply responds with his
father’s old saying: “Good fences make good neigh
bors.” This becomes his mantra, the only words we
hear from him. The speaker acts as though his own
questions are about making mischief more than
anything else, which suggests he already knows the
answers to them. They are questions anyone might
be expected to ask about such a wall, and not just
in the mischief of spring; there is something more
to it than that. The speaker wants to know why
good fences make good neighbors. He is curious,
inquiring, and reflective. The neighbor is cast as his
opposite: someone who does not ask questions and
is content to accept what has always been. He is
unreflective, simply parroting back the phrase he
learned from his father, carrying out his genera
tion’s duty without question.
The speaker continues to question, despite his
neighbor’s lack of interest. Frost teases as the
speaker wonders, “to whom I was like to give
offense.” He puns on the word offense, another part
of the game in and of the poem. The speaker con
tinues to want to know what the “Something there
is” is, and he is not content to let it be. The most
telling and coy lines are “I could say ‘Elves’ to him, /
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather he said it
himself.” The suggestion is subtle, but the speaker
clearly knows who undoes the wall. The lines sug
gest that the “elf” who leaves gaps in the wall is the
neighbor himself, as if the speaker knows something
about the neighbor he is unwilling to admit. At the
least, it suggests that the speaker wants the neigh
bor to admit that deep down he also does not love
the wall. The speaker suggests that the thing that
does not love a wall is actually the very thing that
does. It seems that the neighbor may take down the
wall just so they can engage in the game of putting
it back together again. A visual is presented for the
reader: “I see him there / Bringing a stone grasped
firmly by the top,” and the speaker remarks, “He
moves in darkness it seems to me, / Not of woods
only and the shade of trees.” The sort of darkness
his neighbor moves in is metaphorical. He may
remove boulders in the dark, but he also moves in
another kind of darkness. The neighbor moves not
only in nature’s darkness but in the darkness that
keeps him from more meaningful human connec
tions. It is his lack of reflection, his lonely isolation
of the sort encouraged by his father’s saying. Yet
each spring he needs to meet with his neighbor
once again to enact this ritual of building up
together the wall that separates them.
Walls are not nature’s things; they are human
things, created to keep neighbors apart, but in this
case the wall also brings them together. There is a
division here between what is civilized and what is
natural, just as in Frost’s “The Middleness of the
Road.” The neighbor personifies this division.
The two types of people are highlighted through
out but even more so in the irony of the second-to
last line: “he likes having thought of it so well.” It
seems that those who move in darkness believe
that their thoughts are original when they really are
not. The individual is simply following what came
before, seeing neither “out far or in deep,” being
narrowed by custom, embracing it without ques
tion. The speaker is presented, in contrast, as the
reflective and questioning freethinker.
The wall is being mended throughout the poem,
but it is also a mending wall, doing its own mending.
It is providing both characters with human contact
as they wear their fingers rough by handling the
stones. It takes a lot of effort to keep the wall there,
but it seems to fulfill its complex function.
Frost wrote in a May 1932 letter to his friend
Louis Untermeyer that he was “in favor of a skin
and fences and tariff walls” (Cramer, 133).
Mark Richardson holds that the speaker is
“obviously of two minds: at once wall-builder and
wall-destroyer, at once abettor and antagonist of
seasonal entropies” (142). Richardson describes the
line “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” as
having a tone that “almost acquires an air of finger
wagging, country pedantry” (142). “Mending Wall”
“at once acknowledges the limitations of walls (and
aphorisms) and also their seductions and value,” he
says (142).
“Mending Wall” was first published in North of
Boston. Jeffrey Cramer reports that Frost once
referred to the poem as “Building Wall” in a letter to
Sydney Cox in 1915 (30). In Frost’s “On Taking
Poetry,” his 1955 address to the BREAD LOAF SCHOOL
OF ENGLISH, he said that the poem is “about a spring
occupation in my day. When I was farming seriously
we had to set the wall up every year. You don’t do
that any more. You run a strand of barbed wire along
it and let it go at that. We used to set the wall up. If
you see a wall well set up you know it’s owned by a
lawyer in New York—not a real farmer.”
See WALLS.
FURTHER READING
Attebery, Louie W. “Fences, Folklore, and Robert
Frost,” Northwest Folklore 6, no. 2 (Spring 1988):
53–57.
Clarke, Peter B. “Frost’s ‘Mending Wall,’ ” Explicator
43, no. 1 (Fall 1984): 48–50.
Coulthard, A. R. “Frost’s ‘Mending Wall,’ ” Explicator
45, no. 2 (Winter 1987): 40–42.
Cramer, Jeffrey S. Robert Frost among His Poems: A Lit
erary Companion to the Poet’s Own Biographical
Contexts and Associations. Jefferson, N.C.: MacFar
land, 1996.
Morrissey, L. J. “ ‘Mending Wall’: The Structure of
Gossip,” English Language Notes 25, no. 3 (March
1988): 58–63.
Richardson, Mark. The Ordeal of Robert Frost: The
Poet and His Poetics. Chicago, Ill.: University of Illi
nois Press, 1997, 141–144.
Timmerman, John H. Robert Frost: The Ethics of Ambi
guity. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press,
2002, 116–118.
Trachtenberg, Zev. “Good Fences Make Good Neigh
bors: Frost’s ‘Mending Wall,’ ” Philosophy and Liter
ature 21, no. 1 (April 1997): 114–122.
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walls
Walls, though not numerous, are signifi
cant symbols in Frost’s poetry. Stone walls were
prominent features of the New England landscape,
and many still remain. The period from 1775 to
1825 was known as the golden age of wall building.
While old rail and zig-zag fences made of wood had
previously been popular for fencing farms, it later
became difficult to secure the necessary wood for
building fences after the land was cleared. Farmers
turned to using stones found on their land or even
stealing or buying stone. By 1871 approximately
one-third of the 61,515 miles of fencing in Con
necticut was stone (Schweizer). It is no wonder
that stone walls were a preoccupation of Frost’s
and that walls in general figured so prominently in
his work.
The best-known stone wall in Frost’s poetry
appears in his “Mending Wall,” in which he says,
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” and
meditates on what is being walled in and walled
out. In “Two Look at Two,” two people in late
afternoon or early evening make their way up a
mountainside. Love for each other and for nature
take the two farther from home than they ought to
have traveled, until they are halted by a wall that is
“tumbled” and has “barbed-wire binding.” The wall
also serves as a boundary.
The subtitle of “Atmosphere” is “Inscription for
a Garden Wall.” This poem questions the purpose
of a wall by looking at the specific effects of a wall
in nature. “The Ingenuities of Debt” also presents a
stone wall with a message: “Take Care to Sell your
Horse before He Dies / The Art of Life is Passing
Losses on.” This is a reminder that in the end,
sand, a “serpent on its chin,” is what will become of
the wall, the hall, and all the rest. In contrast, in
“Ghost House” walls represent permanence. “Ghost
House” is one of several Frost poems that employs
an abandoned house as a metaphor: The house is
gone and there is little trace of it left behind, except
for its cellar walls.
In “The Cow in Apple Time” a lone cow is so
inspired during apple time that a wall no longer
confines her, being fenced in is no different from
being in an open pasture. In “Misgiving” walls pro
vide shelter. In “Not Quite Social” “the city’s hold
on a man is no more tight / Than when its walls
rose higher than any roof,” and the allusion to for
tress walls is evident. One of Frost’s political poems,
“Triple Bronze,” questions how much protection
one needs against “The Infinit[e].” The first layer
of protection is personal: “For inner defense my
hide.” The “next defense outside” is the protection
of home, with walls that can be made of “wood or
granite or lime” as long as they are “too hard for
crime / Either to breach or climb.” In the stark
“The Flood” “blood will out” and will not be held
behind “new barrier walls.”
“Bond and Free” draws a distinction between
love and thought, heart and mind; love is described
as clinging and having walls: “wall within wall to
shut fear out.” In “An Old Man’s Winter Night”
the man has “icicles along the wall to keep,” remi
niscent of the “promises to keep” in “Stopping by
Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
In “Brown’s Descent (Or the Willy-Nilly Slide)”
Frost evokes the childish, depicting a man who
goes “ ’cross lots, ’cross walls, ’cross everything” slid
ing down a mountain. Frost also evokes folklore in
“The Figure in the Doorway,” in which a figure,
similar to Paul Bunyan, appears so large that if he
were to fall, he would reach the “further wall.” In
“A Star in a Stoneboat” the speaker playfully imag
ines that a fallen star, a meteorite, has been “picked
up with stones to build a wall.”
In “A Time to Talk” the farmer-poet makes time
for talk. If a friend should call to him from the road,
he writes, slowing his horse to “a meaning walk,”
he will not waste any time but will “thrust [his] hoe
in the mellow ground” and mosey up to the “stone
wall / For a friendly visit.”
Stone walls represent work and leisure too. They
are boundaries used to wall in and wall out, pasto
ral symbols of Frost’s time that represent the poet
well. He was always cagily deceptive in his poetry;
he was certainly not one who did not love a wall. A
wall that would not be loved for its utility could at
least appeal for its beauty.
FURTHER READING
Schweizer, Corey. “The Geology of Colonial New
En gland Stone Walls.” Primary Research. 2002.
Available online, URL: http://www.primaryresearch.
org/ stonewalls/schweizer/index.php#1. Accessed
April 8, 2006.