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From Rude Rural Rhymes by Bob Adams, New York: The Macmillan Company; 1925; pp. 70-71.


[70]

PEACHES OR PINES

O woodman spare that tree,
Refrain from further hacks,
And do not swing and sling so free
Yon double-bitted ax,
But lend a listening ear to me
And let your arm relax.
Our wood supply is growing scant —
We should not chop unless we plant.
Ere to Saint Peter’s choir I’ve risen
To blend my deep bass voice with hisn,
To thumb and strum both flat and sharp
On one size-ten left-handed harp —
Ere this, I say, has come to pass,
I’ll scratch around in leaves and grass
To find an oak or maple seed,
And having stuck it in the mead
And covered it with loam and muck,
In later years with any luck,
I’ll have a tree beneath whose boughs
The woodchucks and the goats may browse.
“What does he plant who plants a tree?”
The poet asks of you and me.
He plants a hope of future good
[71] In shade and beauty, fruit or wood.
So here and there tree seeds I’ll place
To benefit the human race.
Posterity will view those trees
And pay me compliments like these.
“In all his verse together tossed,
That Rural Rhymer was a frost;
We’re good and glad his works are lost,
But as a forestation factor
The bonehead was a right good actor,
In fact a blooming benefactor.”






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