Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, RAISING HUBBARD SQUASH IN VERMONT, by DANIEL LEAVENS CADY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

RAISING HUBBARD SQUASH IN VERMONT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: If we could only spin a top
Last Line: Till I can raise a hubbard squash.
Subject(s): Fields; Fruit; Harvest; Plantation Life; Vegetables; Vermont; Pastures; Meadows; Leas


IF we could only spin a top
And make a wish and get a crop,
The things that I'm about to say
Would then be told another way;
For crops there be so hard to cinch
You couldn't raise 'em with a winch—
It's all I want to do, By Gosh!
To raise a head of Hubbard squash.

Who Hubbard was, I do not know,
Nor why he used his country so;
Considering his great repute
There should be ways to raise his fruit;
For think of all the wives he's grieved,
And all the married men he's peeved—
The spirit slumps like steers in slosh
At jest the name of Hubbard squash.

From that sad day you plant the seed
To Mr. Cutworm's earliest feed;
From Mr. Cutworm's latest eat
To Mr. Bug's first fambly treat;
From Mr. Bug's last meal to frost,
It's labor, love and phosphate lost—
There seems to be no wipe or wash
That disembugs a Hubbard squash.

And if by grace of Pan or Puck,
Or happy chance or splendid luck,
You get a real nice fruit in shape
To praise and pick and cook and scrape,
You'll find the vine has straggled 'round
And grown it on your neighbor's ground,
And all you get is jest a josh
As off he lugs your Hubbard squash.

How strange that we in squashdom prize
The things we in ourselves despise!
Who wants, unless he's sunk in sin,
A green or orange-colored skin?
Or warts that stand a half inch high,
Or "flesh" that's classed as "cool and dry"?
I'll bet some scamp like Jock McCosh
Bred up and named the Hubbard squash.

It's sure a shame a fruit so fine
Should have to grow upon a vine,
And lay around in dust and dirt,
And be bedosed with insect squirt;
A fruit that you can boil or bake
And even use in layer cake—
But what's the use? this talk is bosh
Till I can raise a Hubbard squash.





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