The Lovesick Scarecrow

by


The Lovesick Scarecrow is featured in Herford's whimsical collection, The Bashful Earthquake & Other Fables and Verses, published in 1898.
The Lovesick Scarecrow
The Lovesick Scarecrow title
A scarecrow in a field of corn,
A thing of tatters all forlorn,
Once felt the influence of Spring
And fell in love—a foolish thing,
And most particularly so
In his case—for he loved a crow!

“Alack-a-day! it’s wrong, I know,
It’s wrong for me to love a crow;
An all-wise man created me
To scare the crows away,” cried he;
“And though the music of her ‘Caw’
Thrills through and through this heart of straw,

“My passion I must put away
And do my duty, come what may!
Yet oh, the cruelty of fate!
I fear she doth reciprocate
My love, for oft at dusk I hear
Her in my cornfield hovering near.

“And once I dreamt—oh, vision blest!
That she alighted on my breast.
’T is very, very hard, I know,
But all-wise man decreed it so.”
He cried and flung his arm in air,
The very picture of despair.

Poor Scarecrow, if he could but know!
Even now his lady-love, the Crow,
Sits in a branch, just out of sight,
With her good husband, waiting night,
To pluck from out his sleeping breast
His heart of straw to line her nest.

You may also enjoy Carl Sandburg poem, Laughing Corn. Enjoy other whimsical poems in our collection of Children's Poems.


8.5

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Return to the Oliver Herford library , or . . . Read the next poem; The Snail's Dream

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