HOW sweet the child who says, "I will," when weary father cries, "I wish you'd take an ax and kill about a million flies!" The child who's active to obey, who heeds, with cheerful brow, whatever Pa or Ma may say, is worth more than a cow. I have a pair of young galoots, and when I bid them work, they answer me, "You bet your boots," and never think to shirk. I say to them, "Go rake the leaves from off the lawn today"; they get their rakes and neither grieves that he must quit his play. I say to them, "Go paint the pump, and mow the priceless grass," and they go to it on the jump, and hand me back no sass. For such a wholesome brace of kids, it is a joy to toil, to buy them underwear and lids, and cake and castor oil. How sharper than a serpent's tooth, how worthless and how bad, is that unseemly, graceless youth, who won't obey his dad! For him the world will hold no prize, the dump will be his bourne; he'll live unloved, and when he dies, no soul in town will mourn. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MARY AND GABRIEL by RUPERT BROOKE EMMELINE GRANGERFORD'S 'ODE TO STEPHEN DOLWING BOTS, DEC'D' by SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS AT CASTERBRIDGE FAIR: 3. AFTER THE CLUB-DANCE by THOMAS HARDY EPIGRAM: 45. ON MY FIRST SON by BEN JONSON THE RAGGEDY MAN by JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY |