Telling Fortunes

‘Be not among wine-bibbers; among riotous eaters of
flesh; for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to
poverty; and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.’
Proverbs, 23: 20, 21

I’ll tell you two fortunes, my fine little lad,

For you to accept or refuse.

The one of them good, and the other one bad;

Now hear them, and say which you choose!

I see by my gift, within reach of your hand,

A fortune right fair to behold;

A house and a hundred good acres of land,

With harvest fields yellow as gold.

I see a great orchard, the boughs hanging down

With apples of russet and red;

I see droves of cattle, some white and brown,

But all of them sleek and well-fed.

I see doves and swallows about the barn doors,

See the fanning-mill whirling so fast,

See men that are threshing the wheat on the floors;

And now the bright picture is past!

And I see, rising dismally up in the place

Of the beautiful house and the land,

A man with a fire-red nose on his face,

And a little brown jug in his hand!

Oh! if you beheld him, my lad, you would wish

That he were less wretched to see;

For his boot-toes, they gape like the mouth of a fish,

And his trousers are out at the knee!

In walking he staggers, now this way, now that,

And his eyes they stand out like a bug’s,

And he wears an old coat and a battered-in hat,

And I think that the fault is the jug’s!

For our text says the drunkard shall come to be poor,

And drowsiness clothes men with rags;

And he doesn’t look much like a man, I am sure,

Who has honest hard cash in his bags.

Now which will you choose? to be thrifty and snug,

And to be right side up with your dish;

Or to go with your eyes like the eyes of a bug,

And your shoes like the mouth of a fish!

Source: She Wields a Pen: American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century (University of Iowa Press, 1997)