Poetry

I love poetry and sharing it with others, so here is a favorite poem of mine:

The Lucky Horseshoe
By: J. T. Fields

A farmer travelling with his load
Picked up a horseshoe on the road,
And nailed it fast to his barn door,
That luck might down upon him pour,
That every blessing known in life
Might crown his homestead and his wife,
And never any kind of harm
Descend upon his growing farm.


But dire-il fortune soon began
To visit the astonished man.
His hens declined to lay their eggs;
His bacon tumbled from the pegs;
And rats devoured the falledn legs;
His corn, that never failed before,
Mildewed and rotted onthe floor;
His grass refused to end in hay;
His cattle died, or went astray;
In short, al moved the crooked way.

Next Spring a great drought baked the sod
And roasted every pea in pod;
The beans declared they could not grow
So long as nature acted so;
Redundant insects reared their brood
To starve for lack of juicy food;
The staves from barrel sides went off
As if they had the hooping-cough,
And nothing of the useful kind
To hold together felt inclined:
In short, it was no use to try
While all the land was in a fry.


One morn, demoralized with grief,
The farmer clamored in relie;
Andprayed right hard to understand
What witshcrast mow possesed his land;
Why house and farm in misery grew
Since he nailed up that "lucky" shoe.


While thus dismayed o'er matters wrong,
An old man chanced to trudge along,
To whom ho told, with wormwood tears,
How his affairs were in arrears,
And what a desperate state of things
A picked-up[ horseshoe sometimes brings.


The stranger asked to see the shoe;
The farmer brought it into view;
But when the old man raised his head,
He laughed outright, and quickly said;
"No wonder skies upon you frown;
You've nailed the horseshoe upside down!
Just turn it round, and soon you'll see
How you and Fortune will agree."


The farmer turned the horseshoe round,
And showers began to swell the ground;
The sunshine laughed among his grain,
And heaps on heaps piled up the wain;
The loft his hay could barely hold;
His cattle did as they were told;
His fruit trees needed sturdy props
To hold the gathering apple crops;
His turnip and potato fields
Astonished all men by their yields;
Folks never saw such ears of corn
As in his smiling hills were born;
His barn was full of bursting bins-
His wife presented him with twins;
His neighbors marvelled more and more
To see the increase in his store;
And now the merry farmer sings,
"There are two ways of doing things;
And when for good luck you would pray,
Nail up your horseshoe the right way."

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

By: Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch the woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I really like this poem, it paints such a beautiful picture in your imagination of all the loveliness of winter.

~Nicole

The Owl Critic

By: J. T. Fields, 1880

"Who stuffed that white owl?" No one spoke in

the shop:

The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop ;

The customers, waiting their turns, were all read-

ing

The "Daily", the "Herald", the "Post", little

heeding

The young man who blurted out such a blunt

question ;

Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion ;

And the barber kept on shaving.

"Don't you see, Mister brown,"

Cried the youth with a frown,

"How wrong the whole thing is,

How preposterous each wing is,

How flattened the neck is, how jammed down the

neck is-

In short the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck

't is!

I make no apology ;

I've learned owl-eology.

I've passed days and nights in a hunered collec-

tions,

And cannot be blinded to any defections

Arising from unskilful fingers that fail

To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.

Mister Brown! Mister Brown

Do take that bird down,

Or you'll soon be the laughing-stock all over

town!"

And the barber kept on shaving.

"I've studied owls,

And other night fouls,

And I tell you

What I know to be true:

An owl cannot roost

With its limbs so unloosed ;

No owl in this world

Ever had his claws curled,

Ever had his legs slanted,

Ever had his bill canted,

Ever had his neck screwed

Into that attitude.

He can't do it, because

'T is against bird-laws.

Anatomy teaches,

Ornithology preaches

An owl has a toe

That can't turn out so!

I've made the white owl my study for years,

And to see such a job almost moves me to tears!

Mister Brown, I'm amazed

You should be so gone crazed

As to put up a bird

In that posture absurd!

To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness ;

The man who stuffed him don't know half hie

Business!"

And the barber kept on shaving.

"Examine those eues.

I'm filled with surprise

Taxidermists should pass

Off on you such poor glass ;

So unnatural thay seem

They'd make Audubon scream,

And John Burroughs laugh

To encounter such chaff.

Do take that bird down ;

Have him stuffed again, Brown!"

And the barber kept on shaving.

"With some sawdust and bark

I could stuff in the dark

An owl better than that.

I could make an old hat

Look more like an owl

Than that horrid fowl,

Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.

In fact, about him there's not one natural feather."

Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,

The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,

Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic

(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance ana-

litic,

And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:

"Your learning's at fault this time, any way ;

Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray.

I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good-

day!"

And the barber kept on shaving.

~Readers,

If you have noticed some of the oddly spelled words

and the different form this poem is written, I copied exactly from

an old book of ballads and verses from 1880.

Also, I hope You enjoyed this poem, it is a very comical story

and I can seem to read again and again without tiering of it.

Nicole