Class 11 & 12 Reading Poem No-14 Mending Wall (400 Words Subjective/Objective Solved)

Read the poem and answer the questions that follow:                                                             

Mending Wall

Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends 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:

I have come after them and made the repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.                                        

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door 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 an apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.

” Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it

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,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems 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 neighbours.”

Choose the correct alternatives from the options given below:

 (a) ‘Good fences make good neighbours,’ means

 (i) a strong fence is essential for good relations

(ii) a strong fence keeps out enemies

 (iii) a strong fence helps in maintaining peace between neighbours

 (iv) none of the above

(b) The two neighbours ‘walk the line’ because

(i) they have to draw a line on which they build the wall

(ii) they have to check the gaps in the wall

(iii) they have to mend the gaps in the wall

(iv) none of the above

Answer the following questions briefly in your own words:

 (c) Why do the hunters make the holes in the wall?

(d) What does the narrator mean by saying that ‘he is all pine and I am all an orchard?

 (e) What do the stones remind the narrator of? What is the narrator’s view about mending the wall?

(g) Who does the narrator compare to a ‘stone age man’? Why does he do this?

(h) What kind of men are the narrator and his neighbour?

Find words from the passage which mean the same as each of the following:  

(i) idea (line 25-30)                                                             (j) spirits/fairies (line 35-40)

 ANSWERS:-

(a) (iii)

(b) (iii)

 (c) Rabbits hide inside the walls from hunters who then make holes in the wall to find them and please their yelping dogs.

(d) The narrator grows apples on his property while his neighbour grows pine trees. The narrator tries to convince his neighbour that they do not need a wall because his apples will not cross the wall and eat his pines.

(e) The stones remind the narrator of loaves of bread and balls. They are rounded and hence do not stay in place.

(f) The narrator does not think that the wall is needed; it means nothing more than a ritual to him. He tries to convince his neighbour that it is unnecessary; one should not build a wall if there is no purpose to it.

(g) By comparing his neighbour to a stone-age man, the narrator implies that doing things without rational thought or purpose are signs of a primitive age — which is what his neighbour seems to be doing.

(h) While the narrator seems to think about the purpose and need of doing things (in this case, mending the wall), his neighbour does no such thing and only repeats one saying, “Good fences make good neighbours”— which was taught to him by his father. He is described as a man who moves in darkness. This implies that he simply follows rituals without thought.

 (i) Notion.

 (j) Elves.

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