From Rude Rural Rhymes by Bob Adams, New York: The Macmillan Company; 1925; pp. 113-116.
OLD KING COAL
This is the hungry furnace door
That eats up coal and calls for more.
This is the coal for eighteen bones
So full of slate so full of stones,
Or other grades for twenty plunks,
But likewise full of clinker chunks,
That go in through the furnace door
And leave it hungry as before.
These are the ashes dead and white
To be scraped out both morn and night.
This is the bard in these hard times
Who spends his dollars and his dimes,
Obtained by writing Rural Rhymes,
For bum black diamonds long on slate,
Which sail in toward the furnace grate
And leave it still insatiate.
This is the shovel full of nicks
With which the bard performs his tricks
And puts in many weary licks;
The poker too and eke the shaker,
Which worry that old rhyming faker
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Till he says words nor right nor wise
For one who hopes that, when he dies,
He’ll find in Peter kindly feelings
And have an end of furnace dealings.