THE parents rear a winsome maid, whose name, perhaps, is Rose, and feed her pies and marmalade, and buy her furbelows. They educate her year by year, with knowledge store her mind, although the learning graft is dear, and money hard to find. They hope that when they're old and gray, the damsel will be near, to shoo their dotard griefs away, and dry the misfit tear. "She'll surely be our rod and staff," they say, "when we old wights are ready for the epitaph, and other last sad rites." But when the maid is seventeen, there comes along a guy, whose car burns up more gasoline than any man should buy. Oh, parents cut but little grass, when that young man arrives, whose wagon, burning up the gas, puts joy in maidens' lives. Fair Rose is scorching up the road, and hitting hills on high, and in their silent, sad abode, the old folks sit and sigh. All broken are the hopes and plans which in the years have grown; they know that they are also- rans, for youth must have its own. It is the saddest thing I know—the saddest man can find—when children from the homestead go, and never look behind. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MANHATTAN, 1609 by EDWIN MARKHAM SQUIRE BOWLING GREEN by EDGAR LEE MASTERS A CHANNEL PASSAGE by RUPERT BROOKE A SEA SONG by ALLAN CUNNINGHAM DESPAIR AND FEAR by EMILY DICKINSON LINES TO A MOVEMENT IN MOZART'S E-FLAT SYMPHONY by THOMAS HARDY |