"A GOOD TIME COMING!"
(And it HAS been a good time coming.)
["The game of mixed chance and skill which the farmer plays each year with Nature is still undecided; but, if the farmer wins, his winnings will be large indeed."—The "Times" on Farming Prospects.]
British Farmer, loq.:—
Bless my old bones!—they're weary ones, wherefore I takes small shame—
For the first time for many a year mine looks a winning game!
A "bumper" harvest? Blissful thought! For long I've been fair stuck,
But now I really hope I see a change in my bad luck.
True, my opponent is a chap 'tis doosed hard to match.
I seed a picture once of one a playing 'gainst Old Scratch,
And oftentimes I feels like that, a-sticking all together,
Against that demon-dicer whom we know as British Weather!
What use of ploughs and patience, boys, or skill, and seed, and sickle,
'Gainst frost, and rain, and blighted grain, and all that's foul and fickle?
When the fly is on the turmuts, and the blight is on the barley,
And meadows show like sodden swamps, a farmer do get snarley.
But now the crops from hay to hops show promising of plenty,
A-doubling last year's average, plus a extry ten or twenty.
And straw is good, uncommon so, and barley, wheat and oats, Sir,
Make a rare show o'er whose rich glow the long-tried farmer gloats, Sir!
Beans ain't so bad, spite o' May frosts; turnips and swedes look topping;
Though the frost and fly the mangolds try, and the taters won't be whopping.
Those poor unlucky taters! If there's any mischief going,
They cop their share, and how they'll fare this year there ain't no knowing;
And peas is good, and hops is bad, or baddish. But, by jingo!
The sight o' the hay as I saw to-day is as good as a glass of stingo.
Pastures and meadows promise prime, well nigh the country over,
Though them as depend on their clover-crop will hardly be in clover.
But take 'em all, the big and small, the cereals, roots, and grasses,
There's a lump o' cheer for the farmers' hearts, and the farmers' wives and lasses;
If only him I'm playing against—well, p'r'aps I'd best be civil,—
If he isn't Jemmy Squarefoot though, he has the luck o' the divil.
With his rain and storm and cold and hot, and his host of insect horrors,
He has the pull, and our bright to-days may be spiled by black to-morrers.
A cove like him with looks so grim, and flies, and such philistians,
Is no fair foe for farmer chaps as is mortial men and Christians.
Look at him damply glowering there with a eye like a hungry vulture!
With his blights at hand, and his floods to command, he's the scourge of Agriculture.
But howsomever, although he's clever, luck's all, and mine seems turning,
Oh! for a few more fair fine weeks, not swamped, nor yet too burning,
When the sun shines sweet on the slanting wheat, with the bees through the clover humming,
And us farmer chaps with a cheery heart will sing "There's a good time coming!"