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 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."