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."
Comments
Post a Comment