Good Fe nces Make Good Neighbors

[Jonathan Lighter]

I once read of a professional fence who quoted the line frequently.

  JL

RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
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Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:=20=A0=20=A0=20=A0=20Re:=20[ADS-L]=20Good=20Fe?
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OK, but keep in mind that the speaker of the poem suggests that blind=20
adherence to the notion that good fences make good neighbors is rather fooli=
sh--and=20
Frost himself seems more than a little skeptical. Why build a fence between=20=
an=20
orchard and a pine forest, he asks his neighbor. "He will not go beyond his=20
father's saying, / And he likes having thought of it so well, He says [it]=20
again. ..."=20

In a message dated 6/8/06 12:41:34 PM, cxr1086 at LOUISIANA.EDU writes:


> A colleague, Margaret Freeman, wrote the following paragraph in a recent
> paper on "Mending Wall"
>=20
> That significance, as George Monteiro (1988:126-129) has shown us, is
> deeply embedded in two historical, cultural domains: the existence of a
> Spanish proverbial saying (una pared entre dos vezinos guarda mas (haze
> durar) la
> amistad) which goes back "at least to the Middle Ages" and was recorded
> by Emerson in his journal of 1832 as "A wall between both, best
> preserves friendship"; and the myth of the god of boundaries, named
> Terminus by the Romans, who celebrated a Terminalia festival each year
> on February 23 (in early spring) when "neighbors on either side of=A0 any
> boundary gathered around the landmark" to offer sacrifice to the god and
> celebrate with a feast.
>=20
> The 1988 book is: Montiero, George. Robert Frost and the New England
> Renaissance. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988.
>=20
> --Clai Rice
>=20
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>=20
>=20

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