Read the excerpt from "Mending Wall."Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonderIf I could put a notion in his head:“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t itWhere there are cows? But here there are no cows.Before I built a wall I’d ask to knowWhat 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 ratherHe said it for himself.What is the speaker’s mood in this excerpt?
The speaker says spring brings out “the mischief in me” and imagines teasing his neighbor by suggesting that elves knock the wall down. He also wants the neighbor to question the wall’s purpose for himself, which gives the passage a playful, mischievous mood. “Determined” is less fitting because the speaker is wondering and joking, not firmly insisting on an action.
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