Worlds united

Text 3

Text 3: Poem

Look at the lines from the Robert Frost poem, Mending Wall.

The poem is about neighbours that meet every spring to repair the stone wall that divides their properties. Each farmer walks on his side of the wall and replaces any stones that have fallen to the ground during winter. One farmer begins to question the need to repair the wall.

Read an extract from the poem.

Mending Wall

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 neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? 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 offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down."

Line 23

(copied under Pt VB)

Activity 4: Mending Wall

Activity 4: Worksheet (.doc 25 kB)

You can read the poem, Mending Wall at: