Snowman in the Yard, The

<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN> <h2>The Snowman in the Yard</h2> <h3> (For Thomas Augustine Daly) </h3> <p>The Judge's house has a splendid porch, with pillars and steps of stone,<br/> And the Judge has a lovely flowering hedge that came from across the seas;<br/> In the Hales' garage you could put my house and everything I own,<br/> And the Hales have a lawn like an emerald and a row of poplar trees.<br/> <br/> Now I have only a little house, and only a little lot,<br/> And only a few square yards of lawn, with dandelions starred;<br/> But when Winter comes, I have something there<br/> that the Judge and the Hales have not,<br/> And it's better worth having than all their wealth &mdash;<br/> it's a snowman in the yard.<br/> <br/> The Judge's money brings architects to make his mansion fair;<br/> The Hales have seven gardeners to make their roses grow;<br/> The Judge can get his trees from Spain and France and everywhere,<br/> And raise his orchids under glass in the midst of all the snow.<br/> <br/> But I have something no architect or gardener ever made,<br/> A thing that is shaped by the busy touch of little mittened hands:<br/> And the Judge would give up his lonely estate, where the level snow is laid<br/> For the tiny house with the trampled yard,<br/> the yard where the snowman stands.<br/> <br/> They say that after Adam and Eve were driven away in tears<br/> To toil and suffer their life-time through,<br/> because of the sin they sinned,<br/> The Lord made Winter to punish them for half their exiled years,<br/> To chill their blood with the snow, and pierce<br/> their flesh with the icy wind.<br/> <br/> But we who inherit the primal curse, and labour for our bread,<br/> Have yet, thank God, the gift of Home, though Eden's gate is barred:<br/> And through the Winter's crystal veil, Love's roses blossom red,<br/> For him who lives in a house that has a snowman in the yard.<br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />