The Retired Farmer.

The Retired Farmer.
409.8

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