WHERE did the custom come from, anyway -- Sending the boys to "play," at dinner-time, When we have company? What is there, pray, About the starched, unmalleable @3guest@1 That, in the host's most genial interest, Finds @3him@1 first favor on Thanksgiving Day Beside the steaming turkey, with its wings Akimbo over all the savory things It has been stuffed with, yet may never thus Make one poor boy's face glad and glorious! Fancy the exiled boy in the back yard, Ahungered so, that any kind of grub Were welcome, yet with face set stern and hard, Hearing the feasters' mirth and mild hubbub, And wanting to kill something with a club! -- Intuitively arguing the unjust Distinction, as he naturally must, -- The guest with all the opportunity -- The boy with all the appetite! Ah, me! So is it that, when I, a luckless guest, Am thus arraigned at banquet, I sit grim And sullen, eating nothing with a zest, -- With smirking features, yet a soul distressed, Missing the banished boy and envying him -- Ay, longing for a spatter on my vest From his deflecting spoon, and yearning for The wild swoop of his lips insatiate, or His ever-ravenous, marauding eye Fore-eating everything, from soup to pie! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AN OLD WOMAN: 2. HARVEST by EDITH SITWELL THE OLD SHIPS by JAMES ELROY FLECKER DORIS; A PASTORAL by ARTHUR JOSEPH MUNBY I DO NOT LOVE THEE by CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH SHERIDAN NORTON THE FAMILY MAN by JOHN GODFREY SAXE ADVICE TO A LADY [IN AUTUMN] by PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE |