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Today's quote:

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Lane's End ?

From this ...

... to this ...

... to this???
(Impression by a Canadian artist who shall forever remain an omnibus)

 

Will this be the end of the end of Sproxton Lane as we know it? Will this be the end of the sylvan lane that leads to nowhere and attracts nobody and where time stands still in the land of wait-a-while?

In Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall", two neighbours walk the length of their dividing wall each spring to mend whatever has fallen off. One man does not understand the purpose of the fence; however, his neighbour merely repeats mindlessly the phrase, “good fences make good neighbours”, blind to the reality that the fence keeps nothing out and holds nothing in.

I wonder if Robert Frost had in mind a fence seemingly made out of the butt-ends of 20ft shipping containers which could just as easily have served as the walls of Jericho, the fortifications of Troy, the Maginot Line, or the Berlin Wall.

Click on image to enlarge

However, the moral of Robert Frost's poem is right on the money. It is that "Before I build a wall I'd ask to know/ What I was walling in or walling out,/ And to whom I was like to give offense" because it could just be that "Something there is that doesn't love a wall."

Oh, give me land, lots of land
under starry skies above
Don't fence me in
Let me ride
through the wide open country
that I love
Don't fence me in