(5-11).
Here the farmer says that hunters ripped apart the wall in search of rabbits. This can also be interpreted as that the hunters have walked by the wall and have not bothered to even attempt at fixing the wall. Either way, only he himself is left to mend the wall. The speaker also contradicts his earlier lines by saying that he never actually sees or hears what actually wrecked the wall; so he is left with only imagination and contemplation to figure out what ruins the wall. All he knows is that each year he has to reconstruct it. .
A third of the way into the poem, readers are introduced to the only other character: .
I let my neighbor 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 fallen to each. (12-16).
It is important to note here that the speaker is the one that walks to his neighbor's house and sets the date for the wall's renovation. With exception for this instance, it seems as if the two never cross onto the other's property. The individuality of each character is symbolized here; to each his own.
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 outdoor game,.
One on a side. It comes to little more: (17-22).
This "stanza- is very revealing as it divulges information about the speaker and his personality. In each line, he changes his tone of the poem. He starts by noting the bulkiness of the rocks and the difficulty of keeping them balanced so as to prevent them from ever falling. He then talks about using magic for added measure. From there, the speaker jokes by telling the rocks to at least wait until they have left the yard. He proceeds to get serious and say that his hands are getting sore from the manual labor.