THE EXPOSED NEST
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ou were forever finding some new play.So when I saw you down on hands and kneesIn the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,I went to show you how to make it stay,If that was your idea, against the breeze,And, if you asked me, even help pretendTo make it root again and grow afresh.But 'twas no make-believe with you to-day,Nor was the grass itself your real concern,Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover.'Twas a nest full of young birds on the groundThe cutter-bar had just gone champing over(Miraculously without tasting flesh)And left defenseless to the heat and light.You wanted to restore them to their rightOf something interposed between their sightAnd too much world at once--could means be found.The way the nest-full every time we stirredStood up to us as to a mother-birdWhose coming home has been too long deferred,Made me ask would the mother-bird returnAnd care for them in such a change of sceneAnd might our meddling make her more afraid.That was a thing we could not wait to learn.We saw the risk we took in doing good,But dared not spare to do the best we couldThough harm should come of it; so built the screenYou had begun, and gave them back their shade.All this to prove we cared. Why is there thenNo more to tell? We turned to other things.I haven't any memory--have you?--Of ever coming to the place againTo see if the birds lived the first night through,And so at last to learn to use their wings. "OUT, OUT--" The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yardAnd made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.And from there those that lifted eyes could countFive mountain ranges one behind the otherUnder the sunset far into Vermont.And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,As it ran light, or had to bear a load.And nothing happened: day was all but done.Call it a day, I wish they might have saidTo please the boy by giving him the half hourThat a boy counts so much when saved from work.His sister stood beside them in her apronTo tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap--He must have given the hand. However it was,Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,As he swung toward them holding up the handHalf in appeal, but half as if to keepThe life from spilling. Then the boy saw all--Since he was old enough to know, big boyDoing a man's work, though a child at heart--He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off--The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"So. But the hand was gone already.The doctor put him in the dark of ether.He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.And then--the watcher at his pulse took fright.No one believed. They listened at his heart.Little--less--nothing!--and that ended it.No more to build on there. And they, since theyWere not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
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