{
 "id": "robert-frost/mending-wall",
 "title": "Mending Wall",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "North of Boston",
 "book_slug": "north-of-boston",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 2,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1914,
  "venue": "North of Boston (1914)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7057510"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-frost_north-of-boston",
  "file": "north-of-boston.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3026",
   "https://archive.org/details/northboston00frosgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 45,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 50,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And spills the upper boulders in the sun;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The work of hunters is another thing:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have come after them and made repair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where they have left not one stone on a stone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No one has seen them made or heard them made,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But at spring mending-time we find them there.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And on a day we meet to walk the line",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And set the wall between us once again.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We keep the wall between us as we go.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To each the boulders that have fallen to each.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And some are loaves and some so nearly balls",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We have to use a spell to make them balance:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We wear our fingers rough with handling them.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, just another kind of out-door game,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One on a side. It comes to little more:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There where it is we do not need the wall:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He is all pine and I am apple orchard.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My apple trees will never get across",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I could put a notion in his head:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before I built a wall I’d ask to know",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What I was walling in or walling out,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to whom I was like to give offence.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He said it for himself. I see him there",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He moves in darkness as it seems to me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not of woods only and the shade of trees.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He will not go behind his father’s saying,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he likes having thought of it so well",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}