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You were
forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down
on hands and knees
In 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 pretend
To 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 ground
The 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 right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too
much world at once-could means be found.
The way the
nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to
a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long
deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And 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
could
Though harm should come of it; so built the
screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more
to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven't any
memory-have you?-
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.
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