The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard <br />And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, <br />Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. <br />And from there those that lifted eyes could count <br />Five mountain ranges one behind the other <br />Under the sunset far into Vermont. <br />And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, <br />As it ran light, or had to bear a load. <br />And nothing happened: day was all but done. <br />Call it a day, I wish they might have said <br />To please the boy by giving him the half hour <br />That a boy counts so much when saved from work. <br />His sister stood beside them in her apron <br />To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw, <br />As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, <br />Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap-- <br />He must have given the hand. However it was, <br />Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! <br />The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh, <br />As he swung toward them holding up the hand <br />Half in appeal, but half as if to keep <br />The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all-- <br />Since he was old enough to know, big boy <br />Doing a man's work, though a child at heart-- <br />He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off-- <br />The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!" <br />So. But the hand was gone already. <br />The doctor put him in the dark of ether. <br />He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. <br />And then--the watcher at his pulse took fright. <br />No one believed. They listened at his heart. <br />Little--less--nothing!--and that ended it. <br />No more to build on there. And they, since they <br />Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.<br /><br />Robert Lee Frost<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/out-out-2/
