Poem: “When Father Shook The Stove” by Edgar A. Guest

A Heap o’ Livin’

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American Literature – American Poetry – Edgar A. Guest – Poems by Edgar A. Guest – A Heap o’ Livin’
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When Father Shook The Stove

  ‘Twas not so many years ago,
    Say, twenty-two or three,
  When zero weather or below
    Held many a thrill for me.
  Then in my icy room I slept
    A youngster’s sweet repose,
  And always on my form I kept
    My flannel underclothes.
  Then I was roused by sudden shock
    Though still to sleep I strove,
  I knew that it was seven o’clock
    When father shook the stove.

  I never heard him quit his bed
    Or his alarm clock ring;
  I never heard his gentle tread,
    Or his attempts to sing;
  The sun that found my window pane
    On me was wholly lost,
  Though many a sunbeam tried in vain
    To penetrate the frost.
  To human voice I never stirred,
    But deeper down I dove
  Beneath the covers, when I heard
    My father shake the stove.

  To-day it all comes back to me
    And I can hear it still;
  He seemed to take a special glee
    In shaking with a will.
  He flung the noisy dampers back,
    Then rattled steel on steel,
  Until the force of his attack
    The building seemed to feel.
  Though I’d a youngster’s heavy eyes
    All sleep from them he drove;
  It seemed to me the dead must rise
    When father shook the stove.

  Now radiators thump and pound
    And every room is warm,
  And modern men new ways have found
    To shield us from the storm.
  The window panes are seldom glossed
    The way they used to be;
  The pictures left by old Jack Frost
    Our children never see.
  And now that he has gone to rest
    In God’s great slumber grove,
  I often think those days were best
    When father shook the stove.

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American Literature – American Poetry – Edgar A. Guest – Poems by Edgar A. Guest – A Heap o’ Livin’

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