Robert Frost and the Good Neighbor Poetry
Part 1 - Mending Wall
[The following is a transcript to a lecture for the Rising Tide Foundation.]
To access the lecture format, click here.
Robert Frost and the Good Neighbor Poetry
Part 1 - Mending Wall
Mending Wall is a nice poem that also tells a fun little story, about someone, about his neighbor, and about a wall. Frost takes this old saying, that you might have heard, that good fences make good neighbors and he plays with it. He plays with it in a poetic way to ask if good fences make good neighbors or if good neighbors make good fences.
And is it the same with today’s world problems? Should we build good fences, or should we be good neighbors? Let’s follow Frost through his poem, while he’s playing with this old saying, and see if it causes something in us to go wander off and to wonder about something.
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.
First off, Frost starts the poem with ‘Something there is’. Now, why didn’t he just say, ‘there is something’. That’s how we’d say it, right? Well, maybe it sounds more poetic this way, to say ‘something there is’. Or maybe it’s because he wanted that first word of the poem to be ‘something’, as a way to say that the poem is about this vague, uncertain word ‘something’.
Like when there’s just something about it, but I can’t quite put my finger on it; like when it’s something that’s right on the tip of my tongue but I just can’t find the words to say it; or like when I just somehow have this feeling about something. You know what I mean, we all have that feeling at times and I find that as I get older, I have it a lot more often. But what is this ‘something’ that doesn’t love a wall? Hopefully, we’ll find out later in the poem.
It seems, at first glance, that it’s something that may be natural or may not be (we’re not quite sure yet) but it’s in the winter when the ground is frozen, and somehow this something makes the frozen ground under the wall to somehow move and to make the stones on the top of the wall to fall over. But they fall over when it’s sunny out, so maybe it needs to be a frozen ground but a sunny sky to happen, like two different things happening at one time.
But these falling stones make a gap in the wall that’s wide enough for two people, that not just a single person can pass, but two people can pass. So, whatever this something is that doesn’t love a wall, it does like for two people to be able to come together to pass through the wall, so it’s a friendly something.
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.
There may be a logical explanation for all this. Besides our thinking that it’s an unknown something, there may also be this other something that could cause the stones to fall, a ‘human’ cause – say, some hunters maybe. I think it was quite common for people to hunt for food or for clothing, or even just for sport. So, it may not be a mysterious something, but maybe an easily explained something.
It could be assumed to be a logical cause because the hunters aren’t causing a gap in the wall, like something that’s done randomly, by chance or happenstance, but done deliberately and systematically to cause a gap, such that not one stone is left in the way. That’s not something that’s a simple alteration but it’s a complete change in the stones. So, it could be assumed the cause is hunters because it was done for a reason, that the something was necessary.
And assuming they’re hunting rabbits, maybe the rabbits are hiding in a part of the wall, and maybe they removed the stones to get rid of the rabbits’ hiding place, or maybe the rabbits escaped over the wall, and the dogs are howling in frustration because they can’t follow them, so maybe they removed the stones so the dogs could go run after the rabbits. Maybe that’s the reason. It seems logical enough, right?
The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
But the gaps in the wall that we’re talking about, are those empty gaps that an unknown ‘something’ has caused. And most likely we’d have seen or heard the hunters and dogs, but these gaps, no one sees or hears being made, and no one knows why. Until in the spring we go around to check our wall and we find that something’s changed.
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.
Having found these mysterious gaps in our wall, we don’t try and keep it a secret, but go and tell our neighbor, who lives over the hill, and see if maybe he noticed them too. And we agree to meet at a certain time and place, where we can go and look over the wall together and maybe try to figure out what that mysterious ‘something’ is. But also, we’re mending the wall so that we can reset our wall, maybe reset our boundaries.
And with the wall between us, we each stay on our own side of the wall, so that each of us can see the gaps and the stones from our own side, from our own point of view, and also to hear about the gaps and the stones from the other side, from our neighbor’s point of view. And we’re each responsible for the stones that fall on our side, so that this way, together, maybe we can mend our wall.
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!’
Each stone is so different (large or small, light or heavy, rough or smooth) and each is so different to set down, that it seems that it must be something else, something not practical, that makes the stones fit back together again and keeps this old wall in place – and we hope and pray that they stay put, at least until we’re done mending it.
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:
But all this hard work, roughing our fingers, is it really worth all the effort? Because it would seem like it’s just a game unless there’s a reason for all this work. And the way that we each keep on our own side of the wall, it seems like the way that games are played, with each of us on different sides. Maybe it is just a game we’re playing.
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.’
Because, after all this work, we start to think to ourselves, do we even need the wall, because our two fields are totally different anyway. The one field isn’t going to get up and walk over to the other field for no good reason, because they’re different fields with different purposes. There should be very little chance of some conflict here. You’d think that if there’s no use for it, then why would we need the wall? It seems there’s still this uneasiness, this contradiction that just doesn’t make sense, and we say, you know there’s no real need for this wall, don’t you?
But, “he only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.”
That’s saying that we just have this wall because it’s something that’s always been there, and we mend it because it’s something that’s always been done, and it’s something that we’ve always been told we have to do, and we just assume that somehow it’ll make us into good neighbors. I guess like Isaac Newton’s invisible force, or like Adam Smith’s invisible hand, it just happens that way, you know, that’s just the way it is, for some reason.
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.
Here, we didn’t say that spring brings out the mischief in me, or that spring causes the mischief in me, but we say that spring IS the mischief in me. So just like when nature grows again in the spring, then maybe new wonders grow in us, because it’s natural in us too. Maybe when we find these mysterious gaps in the spring, that’s when we’re being mischievous, that’s when we want to play – earlier didn’t we hint that maybe this is all just a game?
So maybe this mischief in us could be that poetic idea of play – playing to discover new wonders, and also playing with others, as a way to pass on new wonders to others, to get them to think like us – ‘to put a notion in his head’. And so we continue the dialogue, asking why it just happens that way, and why it somehow makes good neighbors? If the original reason for it (where there are cows) isn’t necessary anymore, then what is the reason for it now?
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.
Before we start, we’d want to know if the wall is meant to keep something in or is it meant to keep something out. What was the intention? And we should find out, would others find the wall useful, or would others find it harmful? Don’t we have to include others in making our decision to build the wall?
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.
Here’s that first sentence of the poem again, ‘something there is that doesn’t love a wall’ but this time we’ve added ‘that wants it down’.
In our little dialogue, where we’re trying to figure out what could be the ‘something’ – the purpose or the necessity for wanting the wall, we’re still looking for that ‘something’ that doesn’t want the wall – this desire or yearning that wants that wall down. And this something, this notion, doesn’t agree with the other something, the other reason for building the wall.
But ‘Elves’!!! What do we mean by ‘elves’? If no logical explanation can be found for the gaps made in the wall, maybe something is trying to give us a sign that the wall should come down, and so, to give this something a name maybe we could call it elves. Was it elves that were the unheard and unseen mysterious something that doesn’t love a wall and that toppled the stones from the top of our wall? Maybe. But then we say that it’s not exactly elves.
I guess we think that it’s just a sign from something, but we still haven’t yet figured out what the something is? But we didn’t say to our neighbor that it was elves because maybe we were hesitant to say it was elves and maybe we were hoping that our neighbor would come up with the same idea that this was some sort of sign, and that then we could say that maybe we needed to sit down and think about why we have this wall.
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.
An ‘old-stone savage’ makes us think of someone from the dark ages, or like someone that doesn’t want or doesn’t know how to change. And we’re holding the stone firmly as if this stone is our defence against any change, and maybe as if there’s something that we don’t want to let go of. And we’re in the darkness. Maybe because there’s no light to see by, we’re moving around in the dark, moving around from our memory of how things are. But that darkness we say isn’t a darkness from the outside, like being in a dark woods or being in the shade, so it must be a kind of darkness that’s inside of us, and so we just wander around in this darkness, that’s hiding something from us to see.
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.’
Maybe it’s a fear of something that keeps us wandering around in the dark and that keeps us from wondering why, a fear of questioning what we were taught, even if something is showing us a sign that something’s not quite right. It’s like doing something because of blind faith, where we grab a hold of that old saying and just repeat it again and again from memory, as if it’s all so self-explanatory, as if we don’t have to worry about trying to prove it, about trying to prove if there’s any truth in it or not. Ahhh, maybe that’s it – about proving whether or not it’s true. Maybe our fear of something is a fear of finding the truth.
It seems that we have two different views of the truth – the one that we rely on because we don’t know a better reason, (so we use blind faith, which may be right or it may be wrong but we’re not going to try to prove it) and the other one because we have this uneasiness, like this sign from the elves, that there’s something not right, and we need to find out if there’s any truth in that something.
And here our poem ends with the last line when “he says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.” And so we’re back to square one. And we haven’t answered that question, why something there is that doesn’t love a wall?
But I don’t think that the dialogue ends here. We were only shown a small glimpse of part of the whole dialogue, but a glimpse that showed us the thinking that’s going on.
But how would the dialogue have continued, we wonder.
We could read the whole poem again, and then ask ourselves again, do good fences make good neighbors?
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 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.’
[ next week - part 2 - the Good Neighbor poetry ]