BENONI DUNN
by: John Hay (1838-1905)
- 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.
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