Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1916 — THE ROSEBUSH [ARTICLE]

THE ROSEBUSH

(By Walt Mason.)

The bush whereon the blushing rose, when things are favorable grows, is looking sick and blue; to kec; the bis?. from going dead, ! give it arsenate of lead, and Londm. purple too. 1 wash the stem with ketosene, and dope the leaves with Paris green, and other compoundt weird: and as I use the i oisoned dope. I feel the shriveling of hope and tears stream down my beard And as I toil I wander why the lovely things must always die, without a good excuse; the Jimpson and the mullein thrive, the coQkleburs arc still alive—you cannot cook theii goose. A Keats will perish in his youth, while some old cross-roads bard, forsooth, will live two hundred years; a horse dies early, as a rule, but for a century the mule will wag its misfit ears. The cow that gives all kinds of milk, whose butterfat is fine as silk, wiil seek the railway track, and there she'll stand and chew her gums, ■ htil a locomotive comes, and tele.-, opes her back. With thoughts like these I stand and spray my dying rosebush every day, and know it's all in vain, for everything that’s lovely dies, and man can only swat the flies in sorrow and in pain.