Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MERRY-GO-ROUND, by JOHN WILLIAM SCHOLL


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MERRY-GO-ROUND, by                    
First Line: Men plow their fields, manure and plant
Last Line: To honor the god of things that be.
Subject(s): Plants; Planting; Planters


Men plow their fields, manure and plant,
Ward off crows, and puff and pant
All summer through with hard toil torn
And anxious thought, to raise good corn
To feed fat hogs to get red gold,
To buy more acres to the old,
To plow, manure, and plant and toil,
Redoubling last year's care and coil
To raise more corn to feed more hogs
To get more gold, that only clogs
Their coffers till they buy more fields
To plow, manure, and swell their yields
Tenfold, to feed more hogs, and spin
The seasons round to rebegin.
Land, corn, hogs, money, toil and trouble
(All empty as a child's blown bubble),
Then cease at length from all their labors,
Convoyed to rest by solemn neighbors,
And leave an heir to plow and plant,
Whose pride it is to moil and pant
The summers through for corn and gold
And land and hogs a hundredfold.
Or haply they may leave an heir
Who for such baubles has small care,
Who thinks his heritage more fit
For pleasure, and so squanders it
On dogs and horses, wine and women,
Plunging in seas too deep to swim in,
Until some neighbor with his gold
Hog-gotten, corn-born, as of old,
Redeems it from the prodigal,
Restores it, crib and sty and all,
To plow, manure, and plant and buy,
Harvest and kill, grow old and die,
And leave an heir in honor bound
To keep the hog-corn merry-go-round
Revolving in perpetuity
To honor the god of things that be.





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