Thoughts on "The Exposed Nest" by Robert Frost

The Exposed Nest
Robert Frost

You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
I 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 today,
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 clovers.
'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasking 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 out 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.


. . .

Upon first reading “The Exposed Nest” I felt that I had been allowed to eavesdrop on a private conversation between a father and son or daughter. This was a family matter. Closer examination revealed that this was a poem! One wonders if Robert Frost did not write this to begin with for a child and later decided to make it public?

Robert Frost’s poetry continues to surprise me for its measured blank verse and consistently end-rhymed lines. The pattern of rhyme is never predictable but it is end-rhymed invariably. And this poem is a dramatic monologue, with a first person speaker addressing what I presume is a small child (or adult who was the child addressed by the speaker) who finds, out in a field recently mown by a cutting machine of some type, a bird’s nest.

The first eight lines reveal the heart of a loving and fanciful father (mother?) who sees his child inventing a game, playing with “new-cut hay” (3). The child may even be trying to “set it up on end” (4) and the speaker goes out “In the meadow” (3) to join in the play by showing the child how to make the hay stand up, “to set it upon on end” (4)—pretend to do so, that is, as a child would pretend. This playful parent would even, “if you asked me, even help pretend/To make it root again and grow afresh” (6-7) if, as he thinks about the play of the child which he is witnessing, the child is make-believing , “down on hands and knees” (2) that cut grass can grow again. The scene is charming for its picture of parental devotion to the child even imagining to do that which cannot be done—in this case, expect the grass to “root again and grow afresh” (8).

But a sudden shift of tone from charm to existential takes places when, in line nine, the speaker suddenly discovers that “’twas no make-believe with you today,/Nor was the grass itself your real concern" (10). A threshing machine has sliced the grass off, exposing to the sun a nest of young birds and the child is fussing over his/her discovery. Mercifully, the birds are unharmed by the “cutter bar [that] had just gone champing over/ (Miraculously without tasting flesh)” (14-15). Here the “champing” cutter is personified as that which would “taste flesh” and this startling image stands in unpleasant juxtaposition to the image just a few lines before of the child in the meadow. Again, the tone has changed completely.

We read of the birds “defenseless to the heat and light” (16) and of the child who “wanted to restore them to their right/Of something interposed between their sight/And so much world at once” (17-19). In these lines I am struck with a sense of Frost’s voice breaking through quite directly. Is this not the problem of humanity and thus are not these lines a metaphor for the jarring nature of the world or even some specific historical event? In reading the poetry of Frost one feels a respect or a remembrance or a longing for the simplicity of a childlike explanation of things. No poem exactly comes to mind except that each poem of his that I read strikes me, now that I think of it, as if I am reading a boy’s reflections now dressed up with a man’s ability to explain the viewpoint, of both child and man. Even “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “The Road Not Taken” display a degree of this kind of “double speaker.”

And here, again, in “The Exposed Nest”, the speaker is a not just looking at a child but is speaking as a child would speak in wondering what might happen to the baby birds and if the mother will abandon the nest since “our meddling [might] make her more afraid” (25)—since animals--birds, especially--are known to abandon a nest interfered with by humans. Again, the shift in tone and direction of the poem from childish play to life and death considerations is completely Frostian (Frostique? :-). And then, the struggle about what to do—to cover the birds, to leave them exposed and untouched by human hands, so to speak, is set forth so effectively and briefly. Frost writes, “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” (27-29). This is the second statement in the poem which tells, and doesn’t just show or illustrate, the point which Frost is making. The first is Frost’s declaration about “too much world at once” (or at all!) and the second is this idea that we “take risk in doing good.”

The speaker and child must move on. Life is like that. We have to keep meeting our obligations so he and the child leave the scene physically and mentally and “We turned to other things” (32). But even as Frost dismisses the incident, not because there is no meaning in it, no importance and value, but because his speaker does not understand the puzzle of love and nurture. The speaker is clearly not comfortable with dismissing the care of the birds and yet has no choice but to do so. This tension is the last impression left—and so the reader, yet again—is forced to THINK. He says, “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” (33-36). The child and parent had “built a screen” (34) and had tried to protect the birds by “[giving] them back their shade” (30) but that is an end of child/parent/bird interaction.

The poem, which begins with an image of homey comfort and its protective child/parent bubble concludes with an image of nature’s impersonal and cruel indifference. Even the attempt to do good might bring harm. Frost has captured, again, the rawness and bitter harshness of nature but has done so without terrorizing the reader, as contrasted to the sensationalism of today’s presentation of violence in cinema, music, literature. This is a harshness which must be faced and thought through by everyone. How to resolve the contradiction of love and the apparent lack of love, of comfort and grief, is an issue dealt with in this poem. Frost, by his writing here, invites us into his guarded but direct examination of this topic.