The exact words
The poem
“Mending Wall” opens with one of Frost’s most memorable lines: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” The speaker, a New England farmer, notices that every winter the stone wall between his land and his neighbor’s gets gaps in it, from frozen ground heaving up the stones and from hunters pulling rocks loose. Every spring, he lets his neighbor know, and the two walk the line together, each on his own side, setting the fallen boulders back in place.
The speaker sees no need for the wall where it is. “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.” The neighbor’s only reply is a proverb: “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Who says what
The speaker is tempted to argue. Walls make sense where there are cows, he thinks, but here there are none; before building a wall he would want to know what he was walling in or out. He pictures the neighbor carrying stones “like an old-stone savage armed,” moving “in darkness,” and concludes: “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 neighbours.’”
So the famous line belongs to the neighbor, a man repeating his father’s words without examining them. Yet the poem is not simply against walls. It is the speaker who calls the neighbor every spring to start the work, and the shared job of rebuilding is the only time the two men meet. The wall divides them and also brings them together. Frost lets both ideas stand.
An old saying
Frost did not invent the proverb; the poem itself calls it a father’s saying. Similar advice is much older. George Herbert’s 1640 collection Outlandish Proverbs includes “Love your neighbour, yet pull not down your hedge,” and versions of the modern wording appeared in American almanacs and newspapers in the 1800s.
How to use it
The line is fine as a proverb about privacy and boundaries. Just avoid presenting it as Frost’s advice. In writing about the poem, quote the opening line alongside it; “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” is the speaker’s real point of view.
What people get wrong
Robert Frost's advice that firm boundaries keep the peace.
Frost gives the line to a neighbor who repeats his father's saying without thinking. The speaker says “Something there is that doesn't love a wall.” The poem leaves both views standing.
Timeline
- 1640George Herbert's collection Outlandish Proverbs includes “Love your neighbour, yet pull not down your hedge,” an early relative of the saying.
- 1800sVersions of “good fences make good neighbors” appear in American farm almanacs and newspapers.
- 1914Frost publishes “Mending Wall” as the opening poem of North of Boston, in London.
- TodayThe line is quoted as Frost's advice about boundaries, often by people who have not read the poem.
Use it in a speech
Questions people ask
Did Robert Frost say “Good fences make good neighbors”?
He wrote it, but as the words of a character. In “Mending Wall” the speaker's neighbor says it twice, and the speaker questions it.
What is “Mending Wall” about?
Two New England farmers meet every spring to repair the stone wall between their land. The speaker wonders why they need it, since neither has cows; the neighbor answers only with the old saying.
Did Frost invent the saying?
No. It was an old proverb, and the neighbor in the poem calls it his father's saying. Similar proverbs go back at least to the 1600s.
Which side is Frost on?
The poem doesn't say. The speaker doubts the wall, but he is the one who calls the neighbor each spring to rebuild it.
Cite this quote
These cite the original source directly, so you can use them in an essay or paper. Always check your teacher's required style.