'Horse Sense' in Verses Tense by Walt Mason - HTML preview

SHOVELING COAL

SHOVELING coal, shoveling coal, into the furnace’s crater-like hole! Thus goes the coin we so wearily earn, into the furnace to sizzle and burn; thus it’s converted to ashes and smoke, and we keep shoveling, weeping, and broke. Oh, it’s a labor that tortures the soul, shoveling coal, shoveling coal! “The house,” says the wife, “is as cold as a barn,” so I must emigrate, muttering “darn,” down to the furnace, the which I must feed; it is a glutton, a demon of greed! Into its cavern I throw a large load—there goes the money I got for an ode! There goes the check that I got for a pome, boosting the joys of an evening at home! There goes the price of full many a scroll, shoveling coal, shoveling coal! Things that I need I’m not able to buy, I have shut down on the cake and the pie; most of my jewels are lying in soak, gone is the money for ashes and smoke; all I can earn, all the long winter through, goes in the furnace and then up the flue. Still says the frau, “It’s as cold as a floe, up in the Arctic where polar bears grow.” So all my song is of sorrow and dole, shoveling coal, shoveling coal!