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