"MENDING WALL"

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 outdoor 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 offense.
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.'

By Robert Frost

Image from: http://www.istockphoto.com/

Winter, 2003
"Last Roses" by Denise Oliver-Velez

Fall, 2003
"Robin Redbreast" by William Allingham

Summer, 2003
"My Garden" by Thomas Edwin Brown

Spring, 2003
"Reverie" by Robert B. Martin, Jr.

Winter, 2002
"Written in March" by William Wordsworth

Fall, 2002
"October's Bright Blue Weather" by Helen Hunt Jackson

Spring and Summer, 2002
"A Passing Glimpse" by Robert Frost

Winter, 2001
"Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost

Summer, 2001
"Memory" by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Winter, 2000
"The Heart of the Tree" by Henry Cuyler Bunner

Summer, 2000
"Red Geraniums" by Martha Haskell Clark

Spring, 2000
"Immortality" by Joseph Jefferson

Winter, 1999
"Everest" by Eunice Tietjens

Fall, 1999
"Tree at my Window" by Robert Frost

Summer, 1999
"Climb The Mountains" by John Muir

Spring, 1999
"The Rose Still Grows Beyond the Wall" by A.L. Frink

Winter, 1998
"The Runaway" by Robert Frost

Fall, 1998
"Hope" by Emily Dickinson

Summer, 1998
"A Patch of Roses" by Gail Lemnah Barnett

Spring, 1998
"Song of the River" by William Randolph Hearst

January, 1998
"Birches" by Robert Frost

November and December, 1997
"One Last Rose" by Gail Lemnah Barnett

October, 1997
"Far From the Madding Crowd" by Nixon Waterman

September, 1997
"Kiss From a Rose" by Seal, from the Album: "Seal"

August, 1997
"Summer Rose Saga" by Gail Lemnah Barnett

July, 1997
"A Bird Came Down the Walk" by Emily Dickinson

June, 1997
"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

May, 1997
"The Path That Leads to Nowhere" by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

April, 1997
"The Firefly" by Jane Stuart

March, 1997
"Plant a Tree" by Lucy Larcom

February, 1997
"The Daffodils" by William Wordsworth

January, 1997
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost

December, 1996
"Wintering Rosarians" by Gail Lemnah Barnett

November, 1996
"'Tis the Last Rose of Summer" by Thomas Moore

October, 1996
"Autumn Chant" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

September, 1996
"The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop

August, 1996
"Departmental" by Robert Frost

July, 1996
"City Flies" by Alan Van Dine

June, 1996
"My Neighbor's Roses" by A.L. Gruber

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