Much as I like this poem by Robert Frost with its easy rhythms and neat descriptive touches, I regretfully have to point out that saying a thing well doesn’t make it true and that the last two lines sound like a piece of proverbial wisdom that like many pieces of proverbial wisdom doesn’t bear too much scrutiny. ‘One had to be versed in country things/Not to believe the phoebes wept’. On the contrary there must be innumerable town-dwelling folk who may not know much about the countryside and wouldn’t recognise a phoebe (a kind of American flycatcher) if one came and sat on their head but who would nonetheless be highly sceptical of the idea that birds could be in any way empathetic towards human loss, let alone weep for it.

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things

The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place’s name.

No more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.

Robert Frost