Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ROAD TO RUIN', by ANONYMOUS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ROAD TO RUIN', by                    
First Line: "I went into the grog-shop, tom, and stood beside"
Subject(s): Bars & Bartenders;cowboys;ranch Life;west (u.s.); Southwest;pacific States


I WENT into the grog-shop, Tom, and stood beside the bar
And drank a glass of lemonade and smoked a bad seegar.
The same old kegs and jugs was thar, the same we used to know
When we was on the round-up, Tom, some twenty years ago.

The bar-tender is not the same. The one who used to sell
Corroded tangle-foot to us, is rotting now in hell.
This one has got a plate-glass front, he combs his hair quite low,
He looks just like the one we knew some twenty years ago.

Old soak came up and asked for booze and had the same old grin
While others burned their living forms and wet their coats with gin.
Outside the doorway women stood, their faces seamed with woe
And wept just like they used to weep some twenty years ago.

I asked about our old-time friends, those cheery, sporty men;
And some was in the poor-house, Tom, and some was in the pen.
You know the one you liked the best? — the hangman laid him low,—
Oh, few are left that used to booze some twenty years ago.

You recollect our favorite, whom pride claimed for her own,—
He used to say that he could booze or leave the stuff alone.
He perished for the James Fitz James, out in the rain and snow,—
Yes, few survive who used to booze some twenty years ago.

I visited the old church yard and there I saw the graves
Of those who used to drown their woes in old fermented ways
I saw the graves of women thar, lying where the daisies grow,
Who wept and died of broken hearts some twenty years ago.





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