North of Boston - Mending Wall - Robert Frost
Channel: New Media Arts Inc
Date: 2023-11-03

ROBERT FROST

From a hired hand who finally comes home, to a man who will never walk the New England woods again for his beloved native orchids, Robert Frost paints his metaphors into the lives of country people in a rich and formidable land.

These 17 pieces are from Robert Frost’s modernist masterpiece, “North of Boston” first published in 1914. 

02 Mending Wall
Voices: Em Jannings, Iain McCracken
Directed by Judith Adele and Bob Shurley
Image editing, SFX editing, text adaptation: Judith Adele
Sound and video editing: Bob Shurley

A production of Avatar Repertory Theater: www.avatarrepertorytheater.org

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IMAGE & SFX SOURCES:
Morrow Long, Stone fence hear Nehantic Trail & Nehantic-Pachaug Crossover Trail intersection, 2011
www.freesound.org: kwandalist, Robinhood76, lepolainy, inspectorj

TEXT (Project Gutenberg edition)::
Mending Wall

    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 out-door 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 neighbours."
   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 offence.
   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."