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Robert Frost’s Proverb: “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Friday, September 18th, 2009

The proverb “Good fences make good neighbors” has been around for a couple of centuries in different forms. One place it can be found is in Poor Richard’s Almanack by Benjamin Franklin. His version is: “Love your neighbor; yet don’t pull down your hedge.”

It’s interesting that the specific wording of the proverb, “Good fences make good neighbors” is fairly modern. It comes from Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall from 1914. The poem centers around this concept and questions whether it’s true or not. Here’s the poem…

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 outdoor 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.”

Listen to an MP3 of Mending Wall as read by Alan Davis-Drake for LibriVox

Listen to a different MP3 of Mending Wall as read by Teresa Montgomery for Librivox

The narrator of the poem is annoyed by his neighbor’s insistence that there has to be a fence between them. If only his neighbor would get beyond his father’s beliefs – originating in an old proverb – and reconsider his thinking.

What’s ironic is that Frost coined the new wording of a proverb: “Good fences make good neighbors”, while questioning the very wisdom behind it!

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Posted in Authors, Benjamin Franklin, Countries & Cultures, English, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, Languages, Mama Lisa, Mending Wall, Poetry, Poets, Poor Richard's Almanack, Proverbs, Robert Frost, USA | No Comments »

The Noblest Question in the World

Friday, September 5th, 2008

Quote by Ben Franklin:

The noblest question in the world is, What good may I do in it?

-Poor Richard’s Almanack

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Posted in Authors, Benjamin Franklin, Books, Mama Lisa, Poor Richard's Almanack | No Comments »

About the Old Proverb “Early to Bed, Early to Rise…”

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

I have a correction to make – and investigating my error has led me to an interesting discovery. Way back in 2005, I was asked about the saying, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” At the time I attributed it to Benjamin Franklin. The saying was in Franklin’s book “Poor Richard’s Almanac” in 1735.

(An aside: Everyone has heard about Almanacs. They used to be very important. In Benjamin Franklin’s time, everyone had one. They gave information about the tides, the cycles of the moon, seasons, the dates of the holidays, etc. You have to consider the times to realize their significance. For example, if you were going out at night, the cycle of the moon was important, since there weren’t street lamps lighting the whole way!)

Franklin, as well as other almanac writers, peppered his book with witticisms and proverbs. “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” is one of the sayings he used. This proverb actually originated long before Franklin’s time. It was seen in print as early as 1496, in a piece called The Treatise of Fishing with an Angle. There it is referred to as an old English proverb:

Also whoever wishes to practice the sport of angling, he must rise early, which thing is profitable to a man in this way. That is, to wit: most for the welfare of his soul. For it will cause him to be holy, and for the health of his body. For it will cause him to be well, also for the increase of his goods, for it will make him rich. As the old English proverb says: “Whoever will rise early shall be holy, healthy, and happy.”

So the proverb was around in some form before 1496, since they were already calling it old, even then.

After 1496, the proverb is found in print in other variations:

1523 – Early rising maketh a man whole in body, holer (holier?) in soul and richer in goods.
(Found in The Book of Husbandry by Sir Anthony Fitzherbert)
1577 – Rise you early in the morning, for it hath properties three: holiness, health and happy wealth, as my father taught me.
(Found in the Boke of Nurture by Hugh Rhodes)

Finally, in 1639 the proverb is seen in print in its current form in a book called Paroemiologia by John Clarke: “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Interestingly, there’s another similar proverb from around 1830, “The cock doth crow to let you know, If you be wise, ‘Tis time to rise.”

The two proverbs came together to form the nursery rhyme:

The cock crows in the morn
To tell us to rise,
And he that lies late
Will never be wise:
For early to bed,
And early to rise,
Is the way to be healthy,
And wealthy and wise.

So remember – Go to bed early tonight!

-Mama Lisa

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Robert Frost’s Proverb: “Good fences make good neighbors.”

The Noblest Question in the World

About the Old Proverb “Early to Bed, Early to Rise…”