Something there is that doesn\u2019t love a wall,
\nThat sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
\nAnd spills the upper boulders in the sun;
\nAnd makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
\nThe work of hunters is another thing:
\nI have come after them and made repair
\nWhere they have left not one stone on a stone,
\nBut they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
\nTo please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
\nNo one has seen them made or heard them made,
\nBut at spring mending-time we find them there.
\nI let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
\nAnd on a day we meet to walk the line
\nAnd set the wall between us once again.
\nWe keep the wall between us as we go.
\nTo each the boulders that have fallen to each.
\nAnd some are loaves and some so nearly balls
\nWe have to use a spell to make them balance:
\n\u2018Stay where you are until our backs are turned!\u2019
\nWe wear our fingers rough with handling them.
\nOh, just another kind of outdoor game,
\nOne on a side. It comes to little more:
\nThere where it is we do not need the wall:
\nHe is all pine and I am apple orchard.
\nMy apple trees will never get across
\nAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
\nHe only says, \u2018Good fences make good neighbors.\u2019
\nSpring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
\nIf I could put a notion in his head:
\n\u2018Why do they make good neighbors? Isn\u2019t it
\nWhere there are cows? But here there are no cows.
\nBefore I built a wall I\u2019d ask to know
\nWhat I was walling in or walling out,
\nAnd to whom I was like to give offense.
\nSomething there is that doesn\u2019t love a wall,
\nThat wants it down.\u2019 I could say \u2018Elves\u2019 to him,
\nBut it\u2019s not elves exactly, and I\u2019d rather
\nHe said it for himself. I see him there
\nBringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
\nIn each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
\nHe moves in darkness as it seems to me,
\nNot of woods only and the shade of trees.
\nHe will not go behind his father\u2019s saying,
\nAnd he likes having thought of it so well
\nHe says again, \u2018Good fences make good neighbors.\u2019<\/p>\n
Robert Frost, 1874 \u2013 1963<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Friday, \u00a0February 21, 2020 \u201cBefore I built a wall I\u2019d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out\u201d It\u2019s hard to live through a full day without hearing angry calls for walls to keep out unwanted migrant … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2014\/02\/Robert-Frost.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n