Mending Wall "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors"

[banana republican]

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make 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."

http://www.ketzle.com/frost/mending.htm

Looks like the bushies can't even read....

[Gormy Cuss]

1. No, they just cherry picked the most famous line because it suited

their world view -- "good fences make good neighbors." Out of context it fits perfectly.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.

[idgiehkt]

2. kinda like Reagan using "Born in the U.S.A."

god I still remember how pissed I was when he did this...

I can't remember if this is Frost or not but it is diametrically opposed to what he meant by it. Stoopid. Stoopid. Stoopid.

[banana republican]

3. Yes it is Robert Frost.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Thanks for that reminder. I remember that from Jr. High School, but ...

had forgotten the exact sense of the poem. He gently pokes fun at his neighbor's insistence on the wall, but doesn't believe the need for it himself.

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.

Walls, like doors, face two directions.

[EFerrari]

5. Also by RF, "Immigrants" :

Immigrants

No ship of all that under sail or steam
Have gathered people to us more and more
But Pilgrim-manned the Mayflower in a dream
Has been her anxious convoy in to shore.

:)

[133724]

6. Given todays politics

and the RW pandering I kind of like this part:

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.