Mending Wall
Robert Frost
1 Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
2That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
3And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
4And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
5The work of hunters is another thing:
6 I have come after them and made repair
7 Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
8But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
9 To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
10 No one has seen them made or heard them made,
11 But at spring mending-time we find them there.
12 Ilet my neighbor know beyond the hill;
13 And on a day we meet to walk the line
14And set the wall between us once again.
15 We keep the wall between us as we go.
16 To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
17 And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
18 We have to use a spell to make them balance
19 "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
20 We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
21 Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
22 One on a side. It comes to little more:
23 There where it is we do not need the wall:
24 He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
25 My apple trees will never get across
26 And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
27 He only says,"Good fences make good neighbors.
28 Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
29 If I could put a notion in his head:
30 "Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
31 Where there are cows?
32 But here there are no cows.
33| Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
34 What I was walling in or walling out,
35 And to whom I was like to give offence.
36 Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
37 That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
38 But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
30 He said it for himself. I see him there
40 Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
41 In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed
42 He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
43 Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
44. He will not go behind his father's saying.
45. And he likes having thought of it so well
46He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
The alliteration (repeated sounds) in lines 33 and 34 draws attention to the speaker's
SELECT AN ANSWER
A. questions about the purpose of walls
B. agreement with his neighbor's opinion
C. happiness that the wall will be fixed soon