Page 42 - 2009 Wardlaw Hartridge

Wardlaw-Hartridge
.Vhool
Preparing Students to Lead and Succeed
Dear Seniors,
One of the real treats of the 2008-09 school year was the opportunity to wander through the fields and tents of the Dodge Foundation Poetry Festival, which encouraged me to throw one of my favorite poems into this farewell letter. In this poem, Mending Wall by Robert Frost, the narrator meets his neighbor, as he has done every spring for many years, to walk along a long stone fence that separates their vast properties. Working together with few words, they repair the fence, putting the fallen stones back onto the wall. The narrator comes to wonder why they do this, but the neighbor refuses to question the need for the wall. The excerpt below is from the last portion of the poem:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and 1 am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, 1tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours." Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? 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 neighbours."
The choices you make in college and life beyond often constitute walls that you build or refuse to build, and it is important to know what you are walling in or walling out. The world needs you to go beyond your father’s sayings, to shake loose from some of the chains of received wisdom, to take the risks that may bring new discoveries or new ways to address the many challenges the world faces.
Fare well and stay in touch,
Andrew Webster, Head of School
wH
3ft
1295 Inman Avenue ♦ Edison, New Jersey 08820 908.754.1882 ♦Fax908.754.4922 ♦www.whschool.org