Classic and Contemporary Poetry
BLASTING ROCKS IN VERMONT, by DANIEL LEAVENS CADY Poet's Biography First Line: When cutting corn is late Last Line: And squandered forty plunks. Subject(s): Corn; Farm Life; Labor & Laborers; Vermont; Agriculture; Farmers; Work; Workers | ||||||||
WHEN cutting corn is late From wet or drought or smut, There's time for little jobs Outside the usual rut, And so you take a cut Acrost to Melvin Shedd's, And hire him hard and fast To come and help you blast Some medder niggerheads. Old easy-going Mell Is glad to have you call; He's jack of twenty trades But still his house is small, And early in the Fall Before it's time to hunt, If he can have his meals, And work the way he feels, He'll do a friendly stunt. And so next day he comes Prepared to "smite the rocks," And brings his fuse and drills And blasting powder box, With two peculiar locks, And iron spoon and wedge, And grooved-out tamping tool, And leather cushion cool, And hickory-handled sledge. You pick the bluest "head," And Mell, he holds the drill, And tells you how to strike And keep his friendship still; You whack with mighty will Until you'd give a dime, To try his leather seat, And two, to know what meat There'll be at dinner time. When Mr. Spoon won't reach You guess it's time to load, And Mell unlocks the box Wherein the "stuff" is stowed, And, while he eyes the road, It trickles through his hand, And then he lays his fuse, And tamps a "Northfield News" Right in with dirt and sand. As Mell digs up a match 'Tis sure the hour of Fate; Its flicker sends you both Behind the pasture gate: But, Shucks! the blast you wait Is jest a slimpsy fiz, The wad blows out entire And sets the grass afire That's all the "blast" there is. A week you work away, And when the job is through, You find you've cracked one rock And slightly jostled two, And killed a blooded ewe, And roused a nest of skunks, And powder-faced your skin, And drove a kneecap in, And squandered forty plunks. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AFTER WORKING SIXTY HOURS AGAIN FOR WHAT REASON by HICOK. BOB DAY JOB AND NIGHT JOB by ANDREW HUDGINS BIXBY'S LANDING by ROBINSON JEFFERS ON BUILDING WITH STONE by ROBINSON JEFFERS LINES FROM A PLUTOCRATIC POETASTER TO A DITCH-DIGGER by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS IN CALIFORNIA: MORNING, EVENING, LATE JANUARY by DENISE LEVERTOV A VERMONT 'DONATION' by DANIEL LEAVENS CADY |
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