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 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 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. |
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 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 neighbors." |