Mending Wall
Robert Frost
1874 to 1963
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Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have after them and made repair
Where they have left one stone on a stone,
But they would have rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
on a day we meet to walk the line
set the wall between us once again.
We keep wall between us as we go.
To each the that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves some so nearly balls
We have to use a to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
on a side. It comes to little more:
There it is we do not need the wall:
He all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple will never get across
And eat the cones under pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, I wonder
If I could put a notion in head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to
What I was walling in or walling out,
And whom I was like to give offence.
Something there that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not woods only and the shade of trees.
He will go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having of it so well
He says again, "Good fences good neighbours."