This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark <br />And cold to an orchard so young in the bark <br />Reminds me of all that can happen to harm <br />An orchard away at the end of the farm <br />All winter, cut off by a hill from the house. <br />I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse, <br />I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse <br />By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse. <br />(If certain it wouldn't be idle to call <br />I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall <br />And warn them away with a stick for a gun.) <br />I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun. <br />(We made it secure against being, I hope, <br />By setting it out on a northerly slope.) <br />No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm; <br />But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm. <br />"How often already you've had to be told, <br />Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold. <br />Dread fifty above more than fifty below." <br />I have to be gone for a season or so. <br />My business awhile is with different trees, <br />Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these, <br />And such as is done to their wood with an axe-- <br />Maples and birches and tamaracks. <br />I wish I could promise to lie in the night <br />And think of an orchard's arboreal plight <br />When slowly (and nobody comes with a light) <br />Its heart sinks lower under the sod. <br />But something has to be left to God.<br /><br />Robert Frost<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/good-bye-and-keep-cold/
