| |
| THIS saying good-by on the edge of the dark | |
| And 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. | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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; | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| My business awhile is with different trees, | |
| Less carefully nourished, 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 | 25 |
| 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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