t which defines also inhibits. That which protects also isolates. That which keeps in - will also keep out. Is there indeed need to define and thereby isolate that which requires or desires neither option? “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.” Frost, in recognizing the paradoxical nature of a wall, expresses that one should be cautious before construction and thoughtful in its perpetuation. But one should be cautious not only due to the innate characteristics of a wall, but also because evidence seems to indicate that such duplicitous barriers may be contrary to a larger and more significant natural order of things. “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; . . .” One is struck by the realization that while the ground swell is largely the cause for the toppling of the boulders, it is not there where Frost affixes final blame. He makes claim that it is sent. It is sent by the Something. Frost supposes the existence of a force that sends a conscious emotion, a ground-swell, that not only topples boulders off New England fences but that would also rightly choose to topple the barriers that humankind chooses to create around and within ourselves. It is a force that would choose liberation, not containment, of the spirit and the soul. Whether heavenly or metaphysical, that spiritual force also appears to Frost to be assisted by, if not embodied in, the course of unfettered human activity. “The work of hunters is another thing: / . . . / Where they have left not one stone on a stone, / But they would have the rabbit out of hiding: . . .” Through the course of human history walls have been breached in pursuit: in pursuit of truth, of knowledge, of equality, of freedom. No doubt inspired by the same Something t...
