title: Mending Wall


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