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.'
Okay, so the poems I read were "We real cool" and "Mending Wall" The thing that I liked about these two poems is that there was a big difference between the two. Not only in length but also in language and tone.
For
Mending Wall, there was a lot of flowery language that describes this scenario where these two people seem to have had a falling out and are trying to mend this friendship they both shared. But the one neighbor seems a little to stuck in his ways for the author and him to restore their friendship.
"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."
He's basically telling the author to stay in his own lane and leave him alone. The author is torn because he wants to build this wall between the two but he doesn't know whether that will restore or end their friendship. In the end, the "friend" builds the wall and ends with the same quote "Good fences make good neighbors." My difficulty with this is that at first, since the language was more focused on imagery, I took it more in a literal sense. And I actually thought that there was a wall being built throughout this poem, but nope, the wall is supposed to mean friendship and whether it's worth to save it or let it die.
"We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon."
I laughed at this poem because for some weird reason, I thought about the song "Fancy" (even though Iggy isn't my cup of tea), anywho, I had no problem trying to figure out the meaning behind this because this poem just seems to sound like a bunch of rebellious kids trying to be tough to impress people. The author in my opinion seems to sound super sarcastic and point out that these kids are all talk and don't really know how to mature or grow. It was just interesting to see how these two are different yet can convey meaning and display an image in your head as you read.
