Mending Wall
Something there is that
doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell
under it,
And spills the upper boulders
in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can
pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another
thing:
I have come after them and
made repair
Where they have left not one
stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit
out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.
The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made
or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time
we find them there.
I let my neighbour 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
have fallen to each.
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 out-door
game,
One on a side. It comes
to little more:
There where it is we do not
need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple
orchard.
My apple trees will never
get across
And eat the cones under his
pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good
fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in
me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in
his head:
“Why do they make good
neighbours? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d
ask to know
What I was walling in or walling
out,
And to whom I was like to
give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t
love a wall,
That wants it down.”
I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly,
and I’d rather
He said it for himself.
I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly
by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone
savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it
seems to me,
Not of woods only and the
shade of trees.
He will not go behind his
father’s saying,
And he likes having thought
of it so well
He says again, “Good
fences make good neighbours.”
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