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: | 5 |
I have come after them and made repair | |
Where they have left not one stone on 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, | 10 |
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. | 15 |
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. | 20 |
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, | |
One on a side. It comes to little more: | |
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. | 25 |
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. | 30 |
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, | 35 |
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, | 40 |
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." | |
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