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Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
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| That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, |
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| And spills the upper boulders in the sun, |
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| And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. |
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| The work of hunters is another thing: |
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| I have come after them and made repair |
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| Where they have left not one stone on a stone, |
¡@ |
| But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, |
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| To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, |
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| No one has seen them made or heard them made, |
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| But at spring mending-time we find them there. |
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| I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; |
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| And on a day we meet to walk the line |
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| And set the wall between us once again. |
¡@ |
| We keep the wall between us as we go. |
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| To each the boulders that have fallen to each. |
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| And some are loaves and some so nearly balls |
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| We have to use a spell to make them balance: |
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| 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' |
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| We wear our fingers rough with handling them. |
20 |
| Oh, just another kind of out-door game, |
¡@ |
| One on a side. It comes to little more: |
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| There where it is we do not need the wall: |
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| He is all pine and I am apple orchard. |
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| My apple trees will never get across |
25 |
| And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. |
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| He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'. |
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| Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder |
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| If I could put a notion in his head: |
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| 'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it |
30 |
| Where there are cows? |
¡@ |
| But here there are no cows. |
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| Before I built a wall I'd ask to know |
¡@ |
| What I was walling in or walling out, |
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| And to whom I was like to give offense. |
35 |
| Something there is that doesn't love a wall, |
¡@ |
| That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, |
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| But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather |
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| He said it for himself. I see him there |
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| Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top |
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| In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. |
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| 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, |
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| And he likes having thought of it so well |
45 |
| He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors." |
¡@ |