You were forever finding some new play. <br />So when I saw you down on hands and knees <br />I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay, <br />Trying, I thought, to set it up on end, <br />I went to show you how to make it stay, <br />If that was your idea, against the breeze, <br />And, if you asked me, even help pretend <br />To make it root again and grow afresh. <br />But 'twas no make-believe with you today, <br />Nor was the grass itself your real concern, <br />Though I found your hand full of wilted fern, <br />Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clovers. <br />'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground <br />The cutter-bar had just gone champing over <br />(Miraculously without tasking flesh) <br />And left defenseless to the heat and light. <br />You wanted to restore them to their right <br />Of something interposed between their sight <br />And too much world at once--could means be found. <br />The way the nest-full every time we stirred <br />Stood up to us as to a mother-bird <br />Whose coming home has been too long deferred, <br />Made me ask would the mother-bird return <br />And care for them in such a change of scene <br />And might out meddling make her more afraid. <br />That was a thing we could not wait to learn. <br />We saw the risk we took in doing good, <br />But dared not spare to do the best we could <br />Though harm should come of it; so built the screen <br />You had begun, and gave them back their shade. <br />All this to prove we cared. Why is there then <br />No more to tell? We turned to other things. <br />I haven't any memory--have you?-- <br />Of ever coming to the place again <br />To see if the birds lived the first night through, <br />And so at last to learn to use their wings.<br /><br />Robert Lee Frost<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/exposed-nest-the/
