Fifes and Drums/Concerning Planting
CONCERNING PLANTING
Friend Kipling wrote some lines long since that ended "Pay, Pay, Pay!"
And he helped to clean up Africa. That war was children's play
With this that has to sift the sea, that's playing hide and seek
And prisoners' base with submarines that scuttle life. Last week
I heard a pure-food specialist stand up and start his chant
With "The way to beat Berlin is just to 'Plant, Plant, Plant!'"
They say all nature's short of crops this year and next may be.
The world is shy of ships beside. It spills grain in the sea.
The answer's wider acreage. The farmer'll do his share.
If you want to beat those butchers of babies in the air
You'll tell your wife's relations and the uncles of your aunt
And your seventh cousin twice removed to "Plant, Plant, Plant!"
Now I have a gift for gardens and I've dug my trenches there.
I've planted seeds instead of shells and made the neighbors stare.
I've ranged my ranks of carrots, and beets, and beans, and peas,
With pinks and roses round the sides as pretty as you please.
This year the flowers will have to go. My wife says that we shan't
Steal one more Belgian baby's life. So "Plant, Plant, Plant!"
This year the game is gardens. This year the fad is food.
Gad, if they plow their golf links up I'd cheer the multitude
That have the money habit. If all would take their turn
The butlers and the ladies' maids to weed and hoe might learn.
Say, that's some Cubist picture. My kids declare they can't
Slice up their tennis court. But Ma says "Plant, Plant, Plant!"
Canal sides in New York will bloom. Beside our railroad tracks
We're going to turn the Germans out. Around the rusty shacks
Where we used to do our dumping, and on every vacant lot
I've a picture of a planting worth tons of steel and shot.
Though pacifists may preach and doubt and fools may rave and rant,
We are going to knock the Kaiser out. So "Plant, Plant, Plant!"