I OFTEN cry, "Oh, goodness gracious! My whiskers, rank, apocynaceous, grow faster every year; it takes so much of toil and trouble, to mow away the doggone stubble—I still must shear and shear." I'm shaving, with the lather foaming, at early morn and in the gloaming, and by the midnight lamp; I'm shaving when I should be earning some coin to keep the fires a-burning, till I have barber's cramp. The time men waste, their whiskers mowing, if it were spent in useful sowing, would renovate the earth; why, ask the Innocent Bystanders, do faces run to oleanders, which have no price or worth? It must be great to be a woman, upon whose face, so fair and bloomin', alfalfa doesn't grow; she doesn't, with her sisters, gather, at barbershops, the taste of lather she doesn't ever know. But man must always be a-stropping; to mow away the new outcropping, his tools must have an edge; and if his whiskers are neglected, his friends will cry, till he's dejected, "Come from behind the hedge!" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LET US HAVE PEACE by NANCY BYRD TURNER CITY LYRICS by NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS |