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 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.
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 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.”

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The Old Oaken Bucket by Samuel Woodworth

How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood,
…When fond recollection presents them to view!
The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wildwood,
…And every loved spot which my infancy knew.
The wide-spreading pond and the mill that stood by it,
…The bridge and the rock where the cataract fell;
The cot of my father, the dairy house nigh it,
…And e’en the rude bucket that hung in the well.

That moss-covered bucket I hailed as a treasure,
…For often at noon, when returned from the field,
I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,
…The purest and sweetest that nature can yield.
How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing,
…And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell.
Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing,
…And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well.

How sweet from the green, mossy brim to receive it,
…As, poised on the curb, it inclined to my lips!
Not a full, blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,
…Tho’ filled with the nectar that Jupiter sips.
And now, far removed from the loved habitation,
…The tear of regret will intrusively swell,
As fancy reverts to my father’s plantation,
…And sighs for the bucket that hung in the well.

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Bing Crosby sings The Old Oaken Bucket (3:14).

This video shows the old oaken bucket in Massachusetts and a 1902 recording of the song by the Edison Quartet is played on an antique Victrola (4:09)

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