James Marinero page header image

    

    Google+        STOP PRESS: GATE OF TEARS Now in Apple iBookstore

 

Mending Wall

Robert Frost




This was yet another set poem in school. So elegantly phrased:

'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 was a philistine at school and barely passed my English Literature exam; nevertheless, I'm glad I did the course. For me, the better poets have a concise way of capturing and expressing ideas in a form which occasionally takes the breath away.

This work may still be in copyright (Frost died in 1963) therefore I have not reproduced it here. It is, though, available at poets.org (I have no affiliation to that site):

Mending Wall