The famous poet, Robert Frost, wrote this poem in the early 1900’s. His first line is
“Something there is that doesn’t love a 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 neighbor 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 neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? 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 offense.
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 neighbors.’
I wrote the following poem in my thinking about “Mending Walls”:
Sometimes, the walls that were meant
for comfort and separation
are exposed, and tumble.
There is no need for them
with forgiveness and
understanding,
The full breadth of the fence,
wire, stone and wood,
no longer hides from view,
Or protects life efforts
at possession with
mortgage upon mortgage.
Now, all lay,
exposed,
in the crumbling wall.
Every fibre that would
fence for self-possession,
has no worth,
When the light,
like the wind of your Spirit,
shines through another,
Through the weathered
wood,
and fallen stone.
With property
and efforts
so exposed,
I should think that
such a neighbor
would direct more effort
Toward the
maintenance
of the wall.
No, for more noble
is the Lord of that property
that borders mine,
But I never knew it
till he saw my efforts
at the fence,
And somehow,
knew,
my bankrupt state.
He is not like other neighbors,
that make their borders
more secure
With a tenant such as me,
for I soon discovered
it was His property
That I had maintained
to be my
own.
All my efforts
at the fence,
which had left me barren
And in my bankrupt state,
were now of no comfort,
leaving me spent,
Close
to
death.
Where I had thought
to be master,
were now only efforts at the wall
And tenant,
if that is me,
a poor one,
My talents are directed
at some great wall
that now lies in vain,
Razed by this Lord’s
certificate of possession,
His light,
Shone through my most
sturdy,
piled boulders.
What waste I have laid
of His land; how great the debt
now will I have to pay.
How His light now shows
my misuse of His property
and uncovers all the debits
On vouchers laid bare,
hidden
for the years.
He divides the wall
and restores what is His
to Himself with a gentle wind,
And all the while
He draws
my awe and wonder
At His love,
His forgiveness,
and His power.
I stand where once
was a shaded field, where
grew only weeds from neglect,
Where now the Son
brings forth a crop and bids me
go with Him to my southern neighbor.
I suspect
He be Lord there,
also.