Something There Is That Doesn't Love a Wall

As you can see from my post last week, I'm considering the size and shape of our personal world, and the many ways we draw circles around ourselves to create a world that is as large or small as we can stand to live in. In that spirit, I offer you this well-known poem by Robert Frost, "Mending Wall."

I'll not comment on the poem . . . but would love to commend it to you for your consideration and meditation. I'll provide some suggestions for reflection at the bottom of the post that might prompt you to work with Frost's poem a bit. To hear the poem, read it two or three times through, perhaps once or twice out loud. If you print the poem, highlight the lines that stand out for you, or the phrases that intrigue you. Jot down your own questions about the poem.


Mending Wall
by Robert Frost

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."


** What might be the "something" that doesn't love a wall . . . the "something ... that wants it down"? I have a couple of ideas for myself. What do you think?


** "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."

These three lines seem to be a statement that mocks civility, as if the work of keeping the wall in place -- and between the men -- was the most normal work in the world. How do you understand these lines, especially in light of the "something" that doesn't love a wall?


** There are several places where the poem implies, "This is how it has always been, and this is the way it will be into the days ahead." Note the passages which suggest a clinging to the past. How do you react to them?


**Hold these two lines in your hands -- perhaps one in each hand -- and consider them together. Then, see where you come down.
"Good fences make good neighbours."

"Why do good fences make good neighbours?"


**Frost writes,
"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."

Think of walls you have encountered . . . either literal walls that separated you from others and impeded your travel . . . or metaphorical walls that have kept you apart or separated from a job, a vocation, a relationship, etc. As you consider specific encounters with a wall, what was walled out? What was walled in? (Walls always function both to wall out and to wall in, though that is seldom acknowledged.)


** What would you say to Robert Frost about his poem? Do you have questions to ask him? What would you like to know that you can't readily assume from the actual poem?