Complete poetical works of John Hay / [by John Hay] ; with an introd. by Clarence L. Hay [electronic text]

BENONI DUNN

I SAT on a worm fence talking With one of the Bear Creek boys, When all the woods were ringing With the blue jay's jubilant noise. Prairie and timber were glorious In the love of the hot young sun, But a philosophic gloom possessed The soul of Benoni Dunn.

"Nothin' in all this 'varsal yerth Is like what it ort to be, I've give up tryin' to see the nub — It's too hefty a job fer me. The weaker a feller's stummick may be, The bigger his dinner, you bet, And the more he don't care a damn for cash, The richer he's sure to get.

"Thar's old Brads — got a pretty young wife And the biggest house in Pike — No chick nor child — says he's sixty-two, But he's eighty-two more like. I'low God thinks it a derned good joke— The way he tries it on— To send a plenty of hazel-nuts To folks with their back teeth gone.

"I ort to be in Congress; I would ef I'd went to school. That's Colonel Scrubb our member He's jest a nateral fool. When he come here, Lord! he didn't know Peach blow from a dogwood blossom, And the derned galoot owned up to me That he never seed a 'possum!

"Everything works contráry— You never knows what to do: Ef I sow in wheat I'll wish it was corn Afore the fall is through.

And talk about pleasure — ef I was axed The thing that most I love, I'd say it's gingerbread — and that I git the littlest uv.

"What is the use of livin' Where everything goes skew-haw, Where you starve ef you keep the Commandments, And hang ef you break the law. I've give up tryin' to see the nub Uv what we was meant to be; The more I study, the more I don't know— It's too hefty a job fer me."

And this was the sum of the thinking Of tall Benoni Dunn, — While gay in weeds his cornfield laughed In the light of the kindly sun. Ruminant thus he maundered, With a scowl on his tangled brow, With gaps in his fence, and hate in his heart, And rust on his idle plough.