Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, JERICHO, VERMONT, by DANIEL LEAVENS CADY


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

JERICHO, VERMONT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The first 'big man' I ever knew
Last Line: And touch the earth in jericho.
Subject(s): Towns; Windsor, Vermont


THE first "big man" I ever knew
Was down in Windsor county,
He coopered fifteen hundred plunks
Each year of public bounty;
He run the prison and hung 'em all
Confined in murderers' row,
And everybody praised him up
And said he come from Jericho.

And when I went to Burlington
To be a hilltop student,
I lived on North Winooski street
With people kind and prudent;
A perfectly good man and wife,
And if you care to know,
They'd bought their place and moved to town
That very Fall from Jericho.

Anon I had a little bill
I wished to get gebroken,
And so I stepped inside a bank
And handed out my token:
I saw a tall man back behind,
And someone whispered low—
"Why, that's the president himself,
He made his pile in Jericho."

I went to Boston after that
To start a legal karma,
And had a roommate that I liked
Whose patronym was Palmer;
One day I asked him whence he hailed,
Said he, "You ought to know
The place that palms the Palmers off
Upon the world is Jericho."

One 'lection time I lost a hat
In manner quite dramatic;
I bet Vermont had never had
A governor Democratic:
"There's been one, sure," the umpire umped,
"Galusha, don't you know
His old brick house is standing yet
Up near the bridge in Jericho?"

And when I got to be the kind
Of man that's known as "settled,"
And come to summer 'round Vermont
My soul was nowise nettled
To find that several neighbor folks,
As nice as neighbors grow,
Was either born or raised or both,
Or wished they was, in Jericho.

I don't know much about the place,
Or what's the population,
But say; the way it hits my trail
It ought to be a nation;
I s'pose that if an angel's wing
Should stir the sunset's glow,
The golden wake would lead straight back
And touch the earth in Jericho.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net