It opens Robert's second collection of poetry, North of Boston,[1] published in 1914 by David Nutt, and has become "one of the most anthologized and analyzed poems in modern literature".

[2] Like many of the poems in North of Boston, "Mending Wall" narrates a story drawn from rural New England.

[5] It also examines the role of boundaries in human society, as mending the wall serves both to separate and to join the two neighbors, another contradiction.

The narrator notes how the neighbor seems to be walking not only in the thick shade of woods and trees but in actual "darkness", implying ignorance or inhospitable sentiments or both.

[4][5] Noted philosopher and politician Onora O'Neill uses the poem to preface her book Justice Across Boundaries: Whose Obligations?