In this second stanza the unbroken curve of rhythm adds to the sense of moving imperceptibly into a spell-world, as we dimly note the linking of the rhymes with the first stanza. From "From Woods to Stars: A Pattern of Imagery in Robert Frost’s Poetry." South Atlantic Quarterly. The ascription of "lovely" to this scene of desolate woods, effacing snow, and black night complicates rather than alleviates the mood when we consider how pervasive are the connotations of dangerous isolation and menacing death. It is, after all, "the darkest evening of the year," and the poet is alone "between the woods and frozen lake." His one bond with the security and warmth of the "outer" world, the "little horse" who wants to be about his errand, is an unsure one. There is no reason to suppose that these influences are benignant. The repetition of "sleep" in the final two lines suggests that he may succumb to the influences that are at work. The poet is fascinated and lulled by the empty wastes of white and black. What appears to be "simple" is shown to be not really simple, what appears to be innocent not really innocent. But at the same time they are his, the poet's woods, too, by virtue of what they mean to him in terms of emotion and private signification. The poet is aware that the woods by which he is stopping belong to someone in the village they are owned by the world of men. The artfulness of "Stopping by Woods" consists in the way the two worlds are established and balanced. The dichotomy of the poet's obligations both to the woods and to a world of "promises"-the latter filtering like a barely heard echo through the almost hypnotic state induced by the woods and falling snow-is what gives this poem its singular interest. We are not told, however, that the call of social responsibility proves stronger than the attraction of the woods, which are "lovely" as well as "dark and deep" the poet and his horse have not moved on at the poem's end. He stops by woods on this "darkest evening of the year" to watch them "fill up with snow," and lingers so long that his "little horse" shakes his harness bells "to ask if there is some mistake." The poet is put in mind of the "promises" he has to keep, of the miles he still must travel. At the beginning of your class period, as an introduction to Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall," post this writing prompt on your multimedia projector or overhead screen: “What are the purposes of a fence? Make a list of as many jobs that a fence can perform as you can – at least 10.” If you have the flexibility within your classroom, arrange student desks to where students are facing away from another.The visible sign of the poet's preoccupation-the word is not too strong-is the recurrent image, particularly in his earlier work, of dark woods and trees, Often, as in the lyric with which we have begun, the world of the woods., a world offering perfect quiet and solitude, exists side by side with the realization that there is also another world, a world of people and social obligations. You could cluster desks so that they are in groups of four or five, but all face away from the center – the opposite of cooperative learning, at least for the purposes of this activity. Give students about 5 minutes to make their lists, and then have a brief discussion of the lists that the students made. Make enough copies of “Mending Wall” so that each student has one. For now, keep the unusual seating arrangement if you had room to set it up. Then, either read the poem aloud to the students, or ask for volunteers to read. If you have students read, remind them to base their pauses on the punctuation, not on line endings. If you haven’t introduced free verse yet, you may want to do so before you read the poem.Īsk the students to annotate as they hear the poem, marking devices that they recognize and words or phrases that they either do not understand or that jump out at them. Robert Frost wrote that “writing in free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.” His work shows the ability to work with just about any rhyme and meter schemes, so you might want to ask students why Frost might have chosen to write this poem without any of those strictures.įree verse, of course, refers to poetry with no rhyme scheme and no set meter. ![]() Here are some literary devices that should come up in your large-group discussion of the poem. ![]() If your class is more advanced in terms of finding literary devices, you could split your class up into partners or small groups, have them look for the devices, and then have them share what they found. Personification – “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” – a force is at work that opposes boundaries, an unseen force in nature.
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