In a strong wooden town, the good pine men
Were building a house for a balsa wren;
While in their homes, their ballerinas,
Discussed the philosophy that was popular then.
As is often the case, the men grew bored
And had bought more materials than they could afford.
Some new, very strange, and malleable stuff
They cobbled and mangled, and tied up with cord.
When the pine men woke up to the oaken sun
They looked ’round the shop for what they had done,
And there was the thing, crawling about,
Crude and inelegant, badly homespun.
It climbed up a crate and promptly fell down
And the pine men could see that it leaked at the crown
Some colour of paint that they hadn’t seen
And they took him forthwith to the expert in town.
The old maple doctor could not understand
When she pulled off its head, which she held in her hand
Why it couldn’t go back with a little adhesive,
Why repairs hadn’t gone just as she had planned.
The men were confused, but determined to try
To build that thing better, and make a supply
So the old maple doctor could test them and learn
How to repair them when things went awry.
But each one they built developed a fault
It broke and it wept, and brought work to a halt
So they tore down the last one, and wrote the thing off
As too complicated, not worth the result.