I SPENT a pfennig for a rose, a groschen for some taffy, and said, "The way the money goes would drive a fellow daffy! The cost of living keeps us hot, it's threatening to bust us, and some one surely should be shot, if there's such stuff as justice." I paid a pistole for a pup, a doubloon for a daisy, and then I reared three cubits up, and said the times are crazy. "No matter what a fellow makes," I said, my bosom bleeding, "the money goes for cats and cakes, and other things he's needing. He cannot save a single yen, however hard he's trying, he's stony broke and broke again, whenever he goes buying." I paid a guilder for a goose, a kroner for a cradle, a noble for a hangman's noose, a livre for a ladle. And I was just about to say that it is past man's powers, to put a little sum away, against the day of showers. And then my nephew said, "Dear Unk, the riot act I'm reading; if you would cut out buying junk that no sane man is needing, you'd land in Easy street, perhaps, to stay there, ere you know it; it's blowing coin for useless traps that breaks an old fat poet." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NIGHTINGALES by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES THE CRUEL MISTRESS by THOMAS CAREW THE POPLAR FIELD by WILLIAM COWPER FIRST OR LAST (SONG) by THOMAS HARDY VIRGILS GNAT by EDMUND SPENSER ONE'S-SELF I SING by WALT WHITMAN |