Holman Francis Day

Holman Francis Day Poems

Holman Francis Day Biography

Holman Francis Day (1865-1935) was an American author, born at Vassalboro, Me., and a graduate of Colby College (class of 1887). In 1889-90 he was managing editor of the publications of the Union Publishing Company, Bangor, Me. He was also editor and proprietor of the Dexter, (Me.) Gazette, a special writer for the Lewiston, (Me.) Journal, Maine representative of the Boston Herald , and managing editor of the Lewiston Daily Sun. In 1901-04 he was military secretary to Gov. John F. Hill of Maine. * Up in Maine (1901), verse * Pine Tree Ballads (1902) * Kin O'Ktaadn (1904) * Squire Phin (1905; 1913), a novel dramatized as The Circus Man and produced in Chicago in 1909 * Rainy Day Railroad War (1906; 1913) * The Eagle Badge (1908) * King Spruce (1908) * The Ramrodders (1910) * The Skipper and the Skipped (1911) * The Red Lane: A Romance of the Border (1912) * The Landloper (1915) * Along Came Ruth (play produced in New York, 1914) * Blow the Man Down (1916) * Where Your Treasure Is (1917) * Kavanagh's Clare (1917) * The Rider of the King Log (1919) * When Egypt Went Broke (1920) * All Wool Morrison (1921))

The Best Poem Of Holman Francis Day

When A Man Gets Old

The clash and the clatter of mowing-machines
Float up where the old man stands and leans
His trembling hands on the worn old snath,
As he looks afar in the broadening path,
Where the shivering grasses melt beneath
A seven-foot bar and its chattering teeth.

'When a man gits old,' says he,
'When a man gits old,
He is mighty small pettaters
As I've just been told.'

'I used to mow at the head of the crew,
And I cut a swath that was wide as two.
- Covered a yard, sah, at every sweep;
The man that follered me had to leap.
I made the best of the critters squeal,
And nary a feller could nick my heel.
The crowd that follered, they took my road
As I walked away from the best that mowed.

'But I can't keep up with the boys no more,
My arms are stiff and my cords are sore:
And they've given this rusty scythe to me -
It has hung two years in an apple-tree -
And told me to trim along the edge
Where the mowing-machine has skipped the ledge.

'It seems, sah, skurcely a year ago
That I was a-showin' 'em how to mow,
A-showin' 'em how, with the tanglin' grass
Topplin' and fallin' to let me pass;
A-showing 'em how, with a five-foot steel,
And never a man who could nick my heel.

'But now it's the day of the hot young blood,
And I'm doin' the job of the fuddy-dud'
Hacking the sides of the dusty road
And the corner clumps where the men ain't mowed

'And that's the way
A man gits told,
He's smaller pettaters
When he grows old.'

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