\n<\/span>That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
\n<\/span>And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
\n<\/span>And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
\n<\/span>The work of hunters is another thing:
\n<\/span>I have come after them and made repair
\n<\/span>Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
\n<\/span>But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
\n<\/span>To please the yelping dogs.\u00a0 <\/span>The gaps I mean,
\n<\/span>No one has seen them made or heard them made,
\n<\/span>But at spring mending-time we find them there.
\n<\/span>I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
\n<\/span>And on a day we meet to walk the line
\n<\/span>And set the wall between us once again.
\n<\/span>We keep the wall between us as we go.
\n<\/span>To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
\n<\/span>And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
\n<\/span>We have to use a spell to make them balance:
\n<\/span>\u201cStay where you are until our backs are turned!\u201d
\n<\/span>We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
\n<\/span>Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
\n<\/span>One on a side.\u00a0 <\/span>It comes to little more:
\n<\/span>There where it is we do not need the wall:
\n<\/span>He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
\n<\/span>My apple trees will never get across
\n<\/span>And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
\n<\/span>He only says, \u201cGood fences make good neighbors.\u201d
\n<\/span>Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
\n<\/span>If I could put a notion in his head:
\n<\/span>\u201cWhy<\/i> do they make good neighbors?\u00a0 <\/span>Isn\u2019t it
\n<\/span>Where there are cows?\u00a0 <\/span>But here there are no cows.
\n<\/span>Before I built a wall I\u2019d ask to know
\n<\/span>What I was walling in or walling out,
\n<\/span>And to whom I was like to give offense.
\n<\/span>Something there is that doesn\u2019t love a wall.
\n<\/span>That wants it down.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I could say \u201cElves\u201d to him,
\n<\/span>But it\u2019s not elves exactly, and I\u2019d rather
\n<\/span>He said it for himself.\u00a0 <\/span>I see him there
\n<\/span>Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
\n<\/span>In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
\n<\/span>He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
\n<\/span>Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
\n<\/span>He will not go behind his father\u2019s saying,
\n<\/span>And he likes having thought of it so well
\n<\/span>He says it again, \u201cGood fences make good neighbors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"