Robert Frost : Mending Wall

Allen Butler Talcot

Mending Wall est l’un des poèmes les plus populaires et appréciés de Robert Frost. Il est surtout célèbre pour le fameux vers : « Good fences make good neighbors » (« Les bonnes clôtures font les bons voisins »). On doit à Frost d’avoir remis au goût du jour cet adage ancien qui était tombé dans l’oubli.

Comme tant d’autres poèmes de Frost, celui-ci a donné lieu à de nombreuses interprétations, tant sociales que politiques. Il paraîtrait que Frost, en entendant ces interprétations, fronçait les sourcils et déclarait que le poème ne signifie pas plus que ce qu’il veut dire.

Mending Wall nous montre deux voisins qui, le printemps venu, restaurent comme chaque année après les dégâts de l'hiver, le muret de pierre qui sépare leurs champs. L’un deux s’interroge et demande à l’autre l’utilité d’une telle restauration vu qu’ils n’ont pas de bêtes en pâturage sur leurs terres ni les mêmes plantations d’arbres. A toutes ces objections, l’autre se contente de répondre par la sagesse ancestrale : « Les bonnes clôtures font les bons voisins ».

On remarquera en lisant ce poème le sens de l'observation de Robert Frost, sa capacité à animer, à croquer et à faire parler les ruraux avec beaucoup de justesse. Mending Wall fait partie de ces poèmes qui sont des tranches de vie et constituent de véritables scènes de la vie rurale. Pas étonnant que Frost fut considéré aux Etats-Unis comme le barde national, l'ami du peuple, le sage que l'on consultait pour un avis ou un jugement.

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 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."

Robert Frost