Robert Frost - At Woodward's Gardens lyrics

A boy, presuming on his intellect Once showed two little monkeys in a cage A burning-gla** they could not understand And never could be made to understand Words are no good: to say it was a lens For gathering solar rays would not have helped But let him show them how the weapon worked He made the sun a pinpoint on the nose Of the first one, then the other, till it brought A look of puzzled dimness to their eyes That blinking could not seem to blink away They stood arms laced together at the bars And exchanged troubled glances over life One put a thoughtful hand up to his nose As if reminded--or as if perhaps Within a million years of an idea He got his purple little knuckles stung The already known had once more been confirmed By psychological experiment And that were all the finding to announce Had the boy not presumed too close and long There was a sudden flash of arm, a snatch And the gla** was the monkey's, not the boy's Precipitately they retired back-cage And instituted an investigation On their part, though without the needed insight They bit the gla** and listened for the flavor They broke the handle and the binding off it Then none the wiser, frankly gave it up And having hid it in their bedding straw Against the day of prisoners' ennui Came dryly forward to the bars again To answer for themselves: Who said it mattered What monkeys did or didn't understand? They might not understand a burning-gla** They might not understand the sun itself It's knowing what to do with things that counts