The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #34813 Message #3805730
Posted By: Jim Dixon
18-Aug-16 - 10:16 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: The Good Workman (Walt Mason)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE GOOD WORKMAN (Walt Mason)
I pieced this together from various sources, mainly old newspapers and trade journals. It was published around 1920. I inserted line breaks; it was printed without them, as if it were prose.
THE GOOD WORKMAN
If I shod geese or peeled pertaters,
Or herded snakes and alligators.
I'd have one settled plan—
I'd say—tho' lowly be my labor,
I'd do it better than my neighbor,
Or any other man.
I'll shoe my geese and peel my 'taters
And herd my dog-gone snakes and 'gators
So well that passers-by
Will watch my curves, exclaiming: "Keno!
He surely is a peacherino!
He's here to do or die!"
I know a man whose work is humble;
He merely teaches bees to bumble,
And setting hens to swim;
So well he does his task appointed
That folks keep passing double-jointed
Big compliments on him.
He works till tired and then works harder
And always has a growing larder,
And coal when blizzards roar;
Then to his fire he sits up closer;
He's paid the coal man and the grocer—
No wolf is at his door.
I know some fellows largely gifted
By dreams of easy grafts uplifted,
Who never shed their coats;
They want a job fit for a seraph,
And some fine day the whiskered sheriff
Will come and get their goats.
They loaf around, for soft snaps yearning,
While the other men are busy earning
The good old scads that knock.
In their vain way they vaguely hanker
To supersede the village banker
Or wind an eight-day clock.
A hundred jobs a day go by 'em,
And they are jarred when they descry 'em—
At toil they've always scoffed;
They have a rooted detestation
For all the brands of perspiration—
They sigh for something soft.
And so at last when they grow older,
And heads are gray and feet are colder,
The poorhouse bears their wail,
Or else they croak in some dark alley
Or toddle down the somber valley
While locked up in a jail.
The man who does his best, whatever
May be the field of his endeavor,
Will find life full and sweet;
And when he leaves this haunt of mortals
With face toward the shining portals,
He'll get there with both feet.
—Walt Mason.