Mountain Interval Part 5

"Scare you. But if you shrink from being scared, What would you say to war if it should come?

That's what for reasons I should like to know-- If you can comfort me by any answer."

"Oh, but war's not for children--it's for men."

"Now we are digging almost down to China.

My dears, my dears, you thought that--we all thought it.

So your mistake was ours. Haven't you heard, though, About the s.h.i.+ps where war has found them out At sea, about the towns where war has come Through opening clouds at night with droning speed Further o'erhead than all but stars and angels,-- And children in the s.h.i.+ps and in the towns?

Haven't you heard what we have lived to learn?

Nothing so new--something we had forgotten: _War is for everyone, for children too_.

I wasn't going to tell you and I mustn't.

The best way is to come up hill with me And have our fire and laugh and be afraid."

A GIRL'S GARDEN

A neighbor of mine in the village Likes to tell how one spring When she was a girl on the farm, she did A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father To give her a garden plot To plant and tend and reap herself, And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner He thought of an idle bit Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood, And he said, "Just it."

And he said, "That ought to make you An ideal one-girl farm, And give you a chance to put some strength On your slim-jim arm."

It was not enough of a garden, Her father said, to plough; So she had to work it all by hand, But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow Along a stretch of road; But she always ran away and left Her not-nice load.

And hid from anyone pa.s.sing.

And then she begged the seed.

She says she thinks she planted one Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes, Radishes, lettuce, peas, Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn, And even fruit trees.

And yes, she has long mistrusted That a cider apple tree In bearing there to-day is hers, Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany When all was said and done, A little bit of everything, A great deal of none.

_Now_ when she sees in the village How village things go, Just when it seems to come in right, She says, "_I_ know!

It's as when I was a farmer----"

Oh, never by way of advice!

And she never sins by telling the tale To the same person twice.

THE EXPOSED NEST

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 gra.s.s itself your real concern, Though I found your hand full of wilted fern, Steel-bright June-gra.s.s, 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.

"OUT, OUT--"

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont.

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load.

And nothing happened: day was all but done.

Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work.

His sister stood beside them in her ap.r.o.n To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap-- He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!

The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all-- Since he was old enough to know, big boy Doing a man's work, though a child at heart-- He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off-- The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"

So. But the hand was gone already.

The doctor put him in the dark of ether.

He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.

And then--the watcher at his pulse took fright.

No one believed. They listened at his heart.

Little--less--nothing!--and that ended it.

No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

BROWN'S DESCENT

OR

THE w.i.l.l.y-NILLY SLIDE

Brown lived at such a lofty farm That everyone for miles could see His lantern when he did his ch.o.r.es In winter after half-past three.

And many must have seen him make His wild descent from there one night, 'Cross lots, 'cross walls, 'cross everything, Describing rings of lantern light.