Where sugarin’ might be hayin’ time, an’ all this bustlin’ stir;
Where smells o’spring, an’ tricklin’ sap, and wild flowers never come.
There ain’t no chance for such things around Grace’s city home;
An’ sugarin’-time no different ain’t from summer or from fall.
I wisht Josiah’n me was back—a-workin’ hard an’ all.
The children on these brick paved-walks they make me think of Jim,
What we had hoped would stay by us—the farm was meant for him.
He died when he was twenty. Yes, there was young Josiah,
Professor in a college now, with hope of something higher.
An Grace, our girl, she married what they called a railroad king,