Good fences make good neighbours.

Two neighbours meet in spring to replace stones in the wall between their properties. The narrator questions the wall because one side is apple orchard and the other pine, with no cows to contain. The neighbour repeats his father’s saying and gives no further reason; the narrator keeps helping with the repair while challenging its purpose.

The neighbour’s rule is that keeping a boundary maintains a good relationship. The poem tests that inherited rule against a particular wall that the narrator thinks unnecessary.

Frequently offered as Frost’s own unqualified endorsement of barriers. It is a character’s inherited saying, questioned by the narrator. Nor does the poem reduce to a simple instruction to tear walls down: the questioning narrator also arranges and performs the repair.

Wisdom

• We accept the love we think we deserve. Stephen Chbosky
• Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.
• If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals. J. K. Rowling
• Sometimes people use thought to not participate in life. Stephen Chbosky
• or, if we trust Aristotle, no great genius has ever been without a touch of insanity. Seneca the Younger

• archive.org/details/northofboston00frosrich (North of Boston, London: David Nutt, 1914, first edition: page images, p. 12)
• gutenberg.org/ebooks/3026 (Project Gutenberg e-text: public domain in the US only, not stored here)
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Frost

Robert Frost, North of Boston (1914), ‘Mending Wall’, the neighbour’s first reply, after the comparison of apple trees and pines; North of Boston (1914), p. 12. Spoken by the narrator’s neighbour. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/good-fences-make-good-neighbours/ (23 October 2026).

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