Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE TRANSFORMATION OF A TEXAS GIRL, by JAMES BARTON ADAMS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE TRANSFORMATION OF A TEXAS GIRL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: She was a texas maiden, she came of low degree
Last Line: Had rested there for ages above a flow of oil?
Subject(s): Cowboys; Petroleum; Ranch Life; Texas; West (u.s.); Oil; Southwest; Pacific States


SHE was a Texas maiden, she came of low degree,
Her clothes were worn and faded, her feet from shoes were free;
Her face was tanned and freckled, her hair was sun-burned, too,
Her whole darned lout ensemble was painful for to view!
She drove a lop-eared mule team attached unto a plow,
The trickling perspiration exuding from her brow;
And often she lamented her cruel, cruel fate,
As but a po' white's daughter down in the Lone Star State.

No courtiers came to woo her, she never had a beau,
Her misfit face precluded such things as that, you know,—
She was nobody's darling, no feller's solid girl,
And poets never called her an uncut Texas pearl.
Her only two companions was those two flea-bit mules,
And these she but regarded as animated tools
To plod along the furrows in patience up and down
And pull the ancient wagon when pap'd go to town.

No fires of wild ambition were flaming in her soul,
Her eyes with tender passion she'd never upward roll;
The wondrous world she'd heard of, to her was but a dream
As walked she in the furrows behind that lop-eared team.
Born on that small plantation, 'twas there she thought she'd die;
She never longed for pinions that she might rise and fly
To other lands far distant, where breezes fresh and cool
Would never shake and tremble from brayings of a mule.

But yesterday we saw her dressed up in gorgeous style!
A half a dozen fellows were basking in her smile!
She'd jewels on her fingers, and jewels in her ears —
Great sparkling, flashing brilliants that hung as frozen tears!
The feet once nude and soil-stained were clad in Frenchy boots,
The once tanned face bore tintings of miscellaneous fruits;
The voice that once admonished the mules to move along
Was tuned to new-born music, as sweet as Siren's song!

Her tall and lanky father, one knows as "Sleepy Jim,"
Is now addressed as Colonel by men who honor him;
And youths in finest raiment now take him by the paw,
Each in the hope that some day he'll call him dad-in-law.
Their days of toil are over, their sun has risen at last,
A gold-embroidered curtain now hides their rocky past;
For was it not discovered their little patch of soil
Had rested there for ages above a flow of oil?





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