Mending Wall

The “frozen-ground-swell” introduced in Line 2 has several possible metaphorical readings. First, Frost may be using indirect language to pointedly conceal the expected word: frost. “There is something that doesn’t love a wall, / That wants it down” the poet says, and tells us, in the first two lines of the poem, what this “something” may be: himself. As an artist, Frost has an impulse to empathize and make human connections; some part of him wants the walls between him and the rest of humanity torn down.

The frost might also represent the almost supernatural power of nature. The other forces which break down the wall are human—namely the hunters, who remove stones to pursue rabbits more effectively (Lines 5-9), but also the speaker, who wants the wall down, even if he does not dis-assemble it himself. However, the frost breaks down the wall for its own reasons—or perhaps, more frighteningly, for no reason at all. It is a mysterious force in the poem, working only when no one else is around (Line 10). This mildly dreadful air is underlined by the poet describing the frost in euphemistic, roundabout terms—“the frozen-ground swell”—the same way one might speak of a deity or supernatural force. Frost sometimes uses nature, particularly snow and frost, to evoke the mysterious, darker forces of the world, most famously in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

Finally, on a metaliterary level, the swell beneath the ground may also symbolize the nature of the poem itself. While its message at first appears simple and straightforward, its true meaning swells beneath the surface, disturbing and even toppling the “walls” of the reader’s worldview.