From Rude Rural Rhymes by Bob Adams, New York: The Macmillan Company; 1925; pp. 56-57.
THE SOIL
This bard, like lots of other gents
Who sit around upon the fence
While their own gardens grow to weeds,
Can tell the farmer what he needs.
I pray you, Farmer Jones, draw near;
I’ll spill some wisdom in your ear.
That scheme of agriculture’s rotten
Which leans alone on wheat or cotton.
For Nature’s plan is ages old,
To fill her soil with leafy mold.
But we must even Nature better,
Obey in spirit not in letter.
She has no thought for what she’s sowing
But scatters daisies in our mowing,
And though her chance-sown flowers be sweet,
A hungry world still calls for wheat.
She sows a lot of weeds and junk in,
While we are strong for corn and punkin.
Instead of quack that spreads all over,
We should plow under rye or clover.
The cow is one of our best bets,
She pays the land her honest debts.
That man will find it hard to live
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Who tries to take but never give.
E’en if he wins he is a grafter,
Who’ll have to face his sins hereafter.
The game of life no more he’ll beat
But shovel coal to earn his heat.
So let us see in Mother Earth,
Who have us nurture since our birth,
A partner to be justly used,
No easy mark to be abused.
O not for us alone was made
The soil we turn with plow or spade.
When we are done with all our tilling,
Our milking and our silo filling,
Our sons will sow where we have sown
And mow around where we have mown.
If we the soil shall rob and pluck
And all the riches from it suck,
Our children will be out of luck.
So let us follow Nature’s plan
And work in humus while we can,
Else when good Gabriel’s trump shall blow,
Saint Pete will stand us in a row,
And likely tell us where to go.