The Beauty of a Stone Wall

Kelly Burgess for The Atlantic July 19, 2026, 7 AM ET Share Save “S omething there is that doesn’t love a wall,” Robert Frost wrote in the famous opening line of his 1914 poem “Mending Wall.” That something sends the “frozen-ground-swell” of winter that “spills the upper boulders in the sun,” leaving Frost and his New Hampshire neighbor the springtime duty of picking up and replacing the rocks. Plenty of things want to get a wall down—above all, gravity—but, I have found, there is a countervailing force: Something there is that does love a wall .