The Retired Farmer

The Retired Farmer
4098

He tires soon of the life in town,
Just loafing ain’t much fun
He’s worked for years for the goal he’s reached
But ’tis empty now ’tis won
Of things he envied, he’s now blase,
And the crowd down at the store
Who spend their days on the cracker barrels
Don’t seem as they did before

His boys ain’t like they used to be,
When they helped him enore and plow
They’ve taken up with cigarettes
And billiard playing now
His girls have foolish notions
Their mother never had,
And none of them are as chummy
As they used to be with dad

Somehow there’s always an aching pain
Now that he’s growing old,
For the years he fought with the pratrle lands
And labored through heat and cold
Ah, now he knows as he knew not then,
When he sighed for the seasons to go,
That the toiling years are the happiest years
That come to us here below
-Fred Sweet