Out alone in the winter rain, <br />Intent on giving and taking pain. <br />But never was I far out of sight <br />Of a certain upper-window light. <br />The light was what it was all about: <br />I would not go in till the light went out; <br />It would not go out till I came in. <br />Well, we should wee which one would win, <br />We should see which one would be first to yield. <br />The world was black invisible field. <br />The rain by rights was snow for cold. <br />The wind was another layer of mold. <br />But the strangest thing: in the thick old thatch, <br />Where summer birds had been given hatch, <br />had fed in chorus, and lived to fledge, <br />Some still were living in hermitage. <br />And as I passed along the eaves, <br />So low I brushed the straw with my sleeves, <br />I flushed birds out of hole after hole, <br />Into the darkness. It grieved my soul, <br />It started a grief within a grief, <br />To think their case was beyond relief-- <br />They could not go flying about in search <br />Of their nest again, nor find a perch. <br />They must brood where they fell in mulch and mire, <br />Trusting feathers and inward fire <br />Till daylight made it safe for a flyer. <br />My greater grief was by so much reduced <br />As I though of them without nest or roost. <br />That was how that grief started to melt. <br />They tell me the cottage where we dwelt, <br />Its wind-torn thatch goes now unmended; <br />Its life of hundred of years has ended <br />By letting the rain I knew outdoors <br />In on to the upper chamber floors.<br /><br />Robert Lee Frost<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thatch-the/
