Robert Frost Poems

After reading these few poems by Robert Frost there were a couple that really stood out to me. The first is "Mending Wall" and the second is "The Road Not Taken".

I will start with the "Mending Wall", I am not sure if what I am thinking is correct but I will go with it anyway. It seems to me that at first it is an annual thing to repair your wall. I find it intersting that the thing that keeps the neighbors separated is the one thing that brings them together one time a year. This is because hunters have torn it down to find small game under the rocks. Lines 14 and 15 I feel are very important:

"And set the wall between us once again".
"We keep the wall between us as we go".

Possibly this means that the two neighbors only see each other once a year to fix the wall that keeps them from seeing each other more often. Additionally I think that line 15 shows that even while together they keep themselves separated by this wall. This could represent individuals such as husbands and wives that tend to put barriers between themselves to protect their hearts from being hurt. But they don't know why they are there, it could be because in the past there was a real reason for the barrier. But know as in the poem the one neighbor begins to question why there is a wall when there is really no apparent reason. Lines 25 and 26 illustrates how the first neighbor feels about the wall. He shows that it is lucrative to think that his apple tree will cause some type of harm to the neighbors pine trees.

"My apple trees will never get across"
"And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him".

I have seen this many times in relationships where people alienate themselves from people that really love them only because of something from the past. To tell you the truth I am really confused about the ending of this poem, it doesn't seem to fit with the rest of he poem. My only idea is that the neighbor becomes angry at the thought of removing the wall. But other than that I can't really understand what he is talking about.

One word I was unfamiliar with was "elves" in line 37, that is an acronym for emissions of light and very low frequency perturbations due to electromagnetic pulse sources; extremely bright extremely short (less than a msec) electrical flashes forming a huge ring (up to 400 km diameter) in the ionosphere. And also is the plural of elf.


The second poem was by far my favorite of all the readings posted for today. My overall feeling was that this is a poem that everyone can relate too. I know that I can. Its hard to explain though. In life it is easy to follow the crowd and live basically unnoticed. But the most successful people will have taken risks that others may have found too risky. I believe that Frost is trying portray a very important life decision. Maybe marriage? Because once you have chosen a spouse there is no turning back and starting over to try something else. That one decision will lead to other choices that will take you far away from the fork in the road. The second paragraph is the most powerful to me. I think it says that even though the fork or decision looks like it may make little to no impact on your life that you need to look farther down the road to make the best decision. I try to think about this when making large decisions in my life and if you only life for what gain you may have now you will not make the wise choice. The third line in the third paragraph states “Oh, I kept the first for another day!”. This is the attitude that you can always come back. But later in the same paragraph he shows that in his heart he knows he never will. So make sure you make the right choice!

One other thought I have is that this is a reference to when Jesus states in Mathew 7: 13 and 14. “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Frost may be saying that since he took the road less traveled then it lead him away from bad circumstances in his life. It may have not be the easy way or the obvious choice but it made all the difference in the end.

There were two words that I looked up. The first is “hence” in the second line of the last paragraph. It meas “from this place forward”. The second is in the next line, “diverged”. This means “to move or extend in different directions from a common point”.