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From Rude Rural Rhymes by Bob Adams, New York: The Macmillan Company; 1925; pp. 74-75.


[74]

NAME YOUR FARM

If you possess a likely farm,
Chuck full of crops and cows and charm,
You ought to give a name to it,
Like “Harvest Hills” or “Bodger’s Bit.”
And yet, I pray you, do not choose,
The common names that others use,
The “Hilltop Farms” and “Valley Views,”
Lest, when you stamp the same some day,
On cheese or prunes or hops or hay,
The Patent Office man may say:
“Lay off that name, for it appears,
In Podunk, Maine, John Henry Squeers
Has used it umpty-seven years.”
So work your brains and let them wander
In search of new names here and yonder,
Through tales and myths and old traditions
That fit your farm and its conditions.
From Palestine and Greece and Rome,
Bring poetry and romance home.
If you have oaks try “Druid Grove”
Or some neat reference to Jove.
If you raise mules, like my friend Bill,
You might do worse than “Balaam Hill.”
[75] Yea, if the job were wished on me
To say what each farm’s name should be,
My choice would fit at any rate,
But might be too appropriate.
For you and I and all men know
Some farm that should be “Housewife’s Woe,”
And proud possessors would not swallow
My “Hopeless Hill” or “Slipshod Hollow.”






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