Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That nds 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: 5
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 plea the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has en them made or heard them made, 10 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 t the wall between us once again.笔译二级
We keep the wall between us as we go. 15
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to u a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
美国东北大学
We wear our fingers rough with handling them. 20 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 25
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
北京新东方官网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 30
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,
wife什么意思And to whom I was like to give offen.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, 35
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
哀莫大于心死英文
He said it for himlf. I e him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. 40
He moves in darkness as it ems 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.” 45
有一点什么，它大概是不喜欢墙，
它使得墙脚下的冻地涨得隆起，
大白天的把墙头石块弄得纷纷落：
使得墙裂了缝，二人并肩都走得过。
士绅们行猎时又是另一番糟蹋：
他们要掀开每块石头上的石头，
我总是跟在他们后面去修补，
但是他们要把兔子从隐处赶出来，
讨好那群汪汪叫的狗。我说的墙缝
是怎么生的，谁也没看见，谁也没听见
但是到了春季补墙时，就看见在那里。
我通知了住在山那边的邻居；
有一天我们约会好，巡视地界一番，
在我们两家之间再把墙重新砌起。
我们走的时候，中间隔着一垛墙。
我们走的时候，中间隔着一垛培。
落在各边的石头，由各自去料理。
有些是长块的，有些几乎圆得像球．
需要一点魔术才能把它们放稳当：
“老实呆在那里，等我们转过身再落下！”我们搬弄石头．把手指都磨粗了。
啊！这不过又是一种户外游戏，
一个人站在一边。此外没有多少用处：
在墙那地方，我们根本不需要墙：
他那边全是松树，我这边是苹果园。我的苹果树永远也不会踱过去
吃掉他松树下的松球，我对他说。
他只是说：“好篱笆造出好邻家。”
春天在我心里作祟，我在悬想
能不能把一个念头注入他的脑里：“为什么好篱笆造出好邻家？是否指着有牛的人家？可是我们此地又没有牛。我在造墙之前．先要弄个清楚，
圈进来的是什么，圈出去的是什么，
并且我可能开罪的是些什么人家，
有一点什么，它不喜欢墙，
它要推倒它。”我可以对他说这是“鬼”。但严格说也不是鬼．我想这事还是
由他自己决定吧。我看见他在那里
搬一块石头，两手紧抓着石头的上端，像一个旧石器时代的武装的野蛮人。我觉得他是在黑暗中摸索，
这黑暗不仅是来自深林与树荫。
他不肯探究他父亲传给他的格言
他想到这句格言，便如此的喜欢，
于是再说一遍，“好篱笆造出好邻家”。
Summary
A stone wall parates the speaker’s property from his neighbor’s. In spring, the two meet to walk the wall and jointly make repairs. The speaker es no reason for the wall to be kept—there are no cows to be contained, just apple and pine trees. He does not believe in walls for the sake of walls. The neighbor resorts to an old adage: “Good fences make good neighbors.” The speaker remains unconvinced and mischievously press the neighbor to look beyond the old-fashioned folly of such reasoning. His neighbor will not be swayed. The speaker envisions his neighbor as a holdover from a justifiably outmoded era, a living example of a dark-age mentality. But the neighbor simply repeats the adage.
Form
Blank ver is the baline meter of this poem, but few of the lines march along in blank ver’s char
acteristic lock-step iambs, five abreast. Frost maintains five stresd syllables per line, but he varies the feet extensively to sustain the natural speech-like quality of the ver. There are no stanza breaks, obvious end-rhymes, or rhyming patterns, but many of the end-words share an assonance (e.g., wall,hill,balls,wall, and well sun,thing,stone,mean,line, and again or game,them, and him twice). Internal rhymes, too, are subtle, slanted, and conceivably coincidental. The vocabulary is all of a piece—no fancy words, all short (only one word, another, is of three syllables), all conversational—and this is perhaps why the words resonate so consummately with each other in sound and feel.
Commentary
I have a friend who, as a young girl, had to memorize this poem as punishment for some now-forgotten misbehavior. Forced memorization is never pleasant; still, this is a fine poem for recital. “Mending Wall” is sonorous, homey, wry—arch, even—yet rene; it is steeped in levels of meaning implied by its well-wrought metaphoric suggestions. The implications inspire numerous interpretations and make definitive readings suspect. Here are but a few things to think about as you reread the poem.
The image at the heart of “Mending Wall” is arresting: two men meeting on terms of civility and neigh
borliness to build a barrier between them. They do so out of tradition, out of habit. Yet the very earth conspires against them and makes their task Sisyphean. Sisyphus, you may recall, is the figure in Greek mythology condemned perpetually to push a boulder up a hill, only to have the boulder roll down again. The men push boulders back on top of the wall; yet just as inevitably, whether at the hand of hunters or sprites, or the frost and thaw of nature’s invisible hand, the boulders tumble down again. Still, the neighbors persist. The poem, thus, ems to meditate conventionally on three grand themes: barrier-building (gregation, in the broadest n of the word), the doomed nature of this enterpri, and our persistence in this activity regardless.
But, as we so often e when we look cloly at Frost’s best poems, what begins in folksy straightforwardness ends in complex ambiguity. The speaker would have us believe that there are two types of people: tho who stubbornly insist on building superfluous walls (with clichés as their justification) and tho who would dispen with this practice—wall-builders and wall-breakers. But are the impuls so easily parable? And what does the poem really say about the necessity of boundaries?
The speaker may scorn his neighbor’s obstinate wall-building, may obrve the activity with humorous detachment, but he himlf goes to the wall at all times of the year to mend the damage d
one by hunters; it is the speaker who contacts the neighbor at wall-mending time to t the annual appointment. Which person, then, is the real wall-builder? The speaker says he es no need for a wall here, but this implies that there may be a need for a wall elwhere— “where there are cows,” for example. Yet the speaker must derive something, some u, some satisfaction, out of the exerci of wall-building, or why would he initiate it here? There is something in him that does love a wall, or at least the act of making a wall.
This wall-building act ems ancient, for it is described in ritual terms. It involves “spells” to counteract the “elves,” and the neighbor appears a Stone-Age savage while he hoists and transports a boulder. Well, wall-building is ancient and enduring—the building of the first walls, both literal and figurative, marked the very foundation of society. Unless you are an absolute anarchist and do not mind livestock munching your lettuce, you probably recognize the need for literal boundaries. Figuratively, rules and laws are walls; justice is the process of wall-mending. The ritual of wall maintenance highlights the dual and complementary nature of human society: The rights of the individual (property boundaries, proper boundaries) are affirmed through the affirmation of other individuals’ rights. And it demonstrates another benefit of community; for this communal act, this civic “game,” offers a good excu for the speaker to interact with his neighbor. Wall-building is social, both in the n of “societal” and “sociable.” What ems an act of anti-social lf-等位基因频率
confinement can, thus, ironically, be interpreted as a great social gesture. Perhaps the speaker does believe that good fences make good neighbors— for again, it is he who initiates the wall-mending.
Of cour, a little bit of mutual trust, communication, and goodwill would em to achieve the same purpo between well-dispod neighbors—at least where there are no cows. And the poem says it twice: “something there is that does not love a wall.” There is some intent and value in wall-breaking, and there is some powerful tendency toward this destruction. Can it be simply that wall-breaking creates the conditions that facilitate wall-building? Are the groundswells a call to community- building—nature’s nudge toward concerted action? Or are they benevolent forces urging the demolition of traditional, small-minded boundaries? The poem does not resolve this question, and the narrator, who speaks for the groundswells but acts as a fence-builder, remains a contradiction.
Many of Frost’s poems can be reasonably interpreted as commenting on the creative process; “Mending Wall” is no exception. On the basic level, we can find here a discussion of the construction-disruption duality of creativity. Creation is a positive act—a mending or a building. Even the most destructive-eming creativity results in a change, the building of some new state of being: If you tear down an edifice, you create a new view for the folks living in the hou across the way. Yet creation is also disruptive: If nothing el, it disrupts the status quo. Stated another way, disruptio
n is creative: It is the impetus that leads directly, mysteriously (as with the groundswells), to creation. Does the stone wall embody this duality? In any ca, there is something about “walking the line”—and building it, mending it, balancing each stone with equal parts skill and spell—that evokes the mysterious and laborious act of making poetry.
On a level more specific to the author, the question of boundaries and their worth is directly applicable to Frost’s poetry. Barriers confine, but for some people they also encourage freedom and productivity by offering challenging frameworks within which to work. On principle, Frost did not write free ver. His creative process involved engaging poetic form (the rules, tradition, and boundaries—the walls—of the poetic world) and making it distinctly his own. By maintaining the tradition of formal poetry in unique ways, he was simultaneously a mender and breaker of walls.
Interpretation of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”
ZHAO Xin-li
(School of Foreign Languages, Langfang Teachers College, Langfang 065000, China)
Abstract: Robert Frost is skillful at adopting symbolism and images in his poems. “Mending Wall”, one of
Frost’s well-known poems, had been analyzed in different approaches, such as psychoanalytical approach, social
approach and structural approaches, etc. By exploring the symbol and images applied in “Mending Wall”, it draws
the conclusion that “the wall”, symbolizing convention, is t as a barrier in human communication.
Key words: symbol; image; “Mending Wall”; conventioninvalid
1. Introduction
Robert Frost is adept at applying symbolism and images in his poetry. One aspect of Frost’s theory is “his
understanding of symbolism and how it functions in a poem” (Parini, 1993, p. 265). He classified himlf as a
poet who was a synecdochist and stated that he preferred synecdoche in poetry—that figure of speech we u a
part for the whole. In his poetry, one image after another is unfolded gradually. It is rather easy for readers to catch
the surface meaning of his poetry. However, the ulterior meaning, which is the value of his poetry, worths our life
time of contemplation.
In “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost depicts a commonplace occurrence that a wall parating a farmer’s land
from that of his neighbor’s has crumbled down and awaits repairs. Such is a scene typical in Robert Frost’s poems,
which always take on an easy-understood appearance and is imbued with profound significance. “It would be a
化妆初学者mistake to imagine that Frost is easy to understand becau he is easy to read” (Elliott, 1988, p. 944). You “begin
in delight, end in wisdom.” As we may mend a stone wall, pick up apples, watch a spider, and mow the lawn in his
poems, we also acquire enlightenment and inspiration towards life. As it explores in “Mending Wall” that the
wall—the symbol of convention—sometimes is t as a barrier in human communication.
2. The Wall as the Symbol of Convention
The poem starts with the crumbling down of the wall.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That nds the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spill the upper boulder in the sun,
That makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
As soon as “I” find the toppling wall, “I let the neighbor know beyond the hill” and prepare to mend th
e wall.
To the speaker, erecting a wall is a conventional concept, deeply ingrained in the mind. It is out of instinct that the
speaker acknowledges the neighbor to repair the wall together. The wall standing between the lands of two
ZHAO Xin-li (1980- ), female, B.A., teaching assistant of School of Foreign Languages, Langfang Teachers College; rearch field: British and American literature.
Interpretation of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”
72
families has become a tradition, inherited from ancestors. “The spring mending time” each year is a regular
activity of farmers in New England, revealing the powerful predominance of tradition on people’s mind. Without meditating on its rationality of existence, people obrve it as a strict rule.
The neighbor’s repetition of “Good fences make good neighbors” manifests that he is a convention upholder.
Residing in the convention-dominated world, he regards the proverb as an unquestionable universal truth. When “I
try to put a notion in his head,” his mere utterance is the proverb. His respon is short, full of coldness and
obstinacy. He asrts it with such a blind determination towards the existence of the wall in between that an
invisible wall has been installed between them. Without pondering on whether or not there is the necessity to build
a wall, he sticks to dogged rules of convention and refus to any kind of change. To some degree, he is the reprentative of convention.
The neighbor’s mind is also exemplified in his behavior.
I e him there
什么是预科
Bring a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
The shift in voice, a slowing down and steadying of rhythm, the contemplativeness previously abnt, does
not simply mime the slow actions of the neighbor. The neighbor likened to the old-stone savage, is considered
backward and uncivilized. The image is also a hint of convention, which has been lasting ever since the primitive
age and has an irresistible dominance on people. Furthermore, a emingly apparent evolvement of human beings
turns out to be the lack of communication. With the economic development, however, people alienate one from
another by installing walls in between. “Frost himlf realized that such neighbors on nearby farms were
increasing in number” (Averev, 1976, p. 255). Only under the harbor of tho physically existing walls can they
英语在线翻译develop a n of curity and safety. They, reprented by the neighbor in the poem, hold a suspicious opinion
towards others and refu to conduct genuine communication with each other. As time goes by, they are confined
to their own world. There is nothing left in their psychological world except the tremendous power of convention.
Another influence of convention on people is the “darkness” shrouding the neighbor as is depicted in the
poem. “He moved in darkness as it ems to me, / not of woods only and the shade of trees.” It reflects a revision
in the speaker as he imagines the neighbor and acknowledges how far from him—how other from him—the
neighbor is, a distance which is metaphorical and rendered here and temporally through “like an old savage.” The neighbor, dwelling in the shade of convention, parates others from him by enclosing himlf in his “solid
fortress.” The speaker, who realizes the darkness surrounding the neighbor and others, is also aware that the
distance is not transgressible and nor is genuine reciprocity possible. “As he confronts that darkness and distance,
he can consider what barriers, if any, he would want down, what barriers he simply cannot cross, and what such an
act might take.”
The respon towards the crumbling wall and the process of “Mending Wall” implies that convention has
exerted a tremendous dominance on people’s mind and behavior.
There aris a conflict between the neighbor and the speaker on whether there is a need to mend the wall. The
speaker insists that there is no need to build a wall, becau
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across,
And eat the cones under his pines.
Interpretation of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”
73
Influenced by the conventional ideas as well, it dawns on the speaker that there is no necessity to keep a wall
