This post was originally published on May 22, 2022
I was walking in the woods near the Village of Stanley recently and came upon a rock wall that looked like it had been there for a thousand years. Wondering who built it and when, I followed it down over a small hill into my imagination.
I’m fascinated by rock walls. I’m not sure why. A Montreal psychic told me once that I lived in Elizabethan England in another life, so maybe that has something to do with it. The English love building stuff out of rocks.
My favourite rock wall, and the favourite rock wall of many, is located on the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire. I visited there a few years ago, well, more than a few years now, but I doubt the wall’s changed. She’s pretty much the same as when the poet walked beside it 120 years ago.
I recall getting out of my car in drizzling rain and being surrounded by a soft morning mist. Standing in front of the simple white clapboard farmhouse where once a literary giant lived was poetry itself. So was the view of the barn, the meadow and the forest of pine, maple and oak beyond.
“Some of the best-loved poems in the English language are associated with this small farm owned by the poet from 1900-1911,” a sign in the front yard says. “Here Frost farmed, taught at nearby Pinkerton Academy and developed the poetic voice which later won him the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times and world fame as one of our foremost poets.”
On January 20, 1961, Robert Frost spoke at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. Kennedy loved Frost’s work and, just three years earlier, on October 8, 1957, based his famous ‘Good Fences Make Good Neighbours’ speech on Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall.”
The poem recounts a friendly argument between the poet and his French Canadian neighbour during their annual walk along the boundary wall to replace fallen stones. Kennedy delivered the speech during convocation ceremonies at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, during which he was awarded an honourary degree.
For the young and charismatic senator from Massachusetts who had gotten to know Lord Beaverbrook in England during the Second World War, it was an opportunity to address an international audience and raise his profile for the presidency. As Chancellor of UNB, Beaverbrook made the speech and Kennedy’s honourary degree possible.
As I walked beside the stone wall on the southern boundary of Frost’s property, the same wall that inspired “Mending Wall,” I thought about Frost’s words and their significance in a world filled with fear.
“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.”
Frost does not believe a wall between his property and his neighbour’s property is necessary. “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.”
Despite their opposing views on boundaries, Frost agrees to go along with his neighbour and repair the wall. “I let my neighbour 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.”
As they walk, Frost realizes that repairing the wall with his neighbour allows the two men to get to know each other better and make their relationship stronger, stronger than if they had maintained isolation on their own property.
“He will not go behind his father’s saying,” Frost concludes. “And he likes having thought of it so well / He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
