Sesquicentennial: Robert Frost at 150

Robert Frost and California? Robert Frost and San Diego? Robert Frost and Ipswich, Massachusetts? The beloved poet was born in San Francisco but at age 11 moved to Massachusetts, the land of his forbearers.

Frost was also a descendant of Samuel Appleton, one of the early English settlers of Ipswich, Massachusetts, and Rev. George Phillips, one of the early English settlers of Watertown, Massachusetts. I lived in Ipswich for thirteen years and next week my son’s family moves back to Ipswich. My great-great-grandmother was Anne Phillips Barnes, a direct descendant of Rev. George Phillips.

Perhaps this is why I’ve always felt a special connection to Robert Frost and his poetry.

But I also live in San Diego now and The Robert Frost Society celebrates the sesquicentennial of his birth March 20-24 in San Diego.

Join the Robert Frost Society and the Library Foundation San Diego for five days of poetry workshops, talks, and readings to celebrate the 150th birthday of Robert Frost, born March 26, 1874. All events are free and open to the public. Register on the Eventbrite link at the Robert Frost Society website.

You’ll find other Frost poems on my blog but Mending Wall prompts memories of New England stone walls and their stories.

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

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 neighbors.’
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 offense.
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.’