"Mending Wall" describes the old, low stone walls of New England that still often mark property lines. In the poem, the narrator and his neighbor walk the length of their dividing wall. Each one picks up stones that have fallen naturally from it (or from hunters who dismantled part of it to find a hiding rabbit), and places them back where the rocks will fit and stay.
The poem is generally written in iambic pentameter, but the stresses on the syllables aren’t consistent. The line “But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather,” even has an extra syllable at the end. The poem uses no rhyme scheme. And if you look at the format of each line, the profile looks a bit ragged – just like real stone walls do, with some parts that fit smoothly and others that stick out a bit more than others. For these reasons, it could be said that the structure of the poem matches its subject matter well.
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