City Festivals :: :: University of Virginia Library

Reason that I'm here to-night
No one here can help but know;
Plain to all discerning sight:
Didn't grow.
Some who overgrew are here,
Some whose growth developed queer;
Some that grew themselves in ways
That from business stand-point pays;
All my charms are negative;
How I've grieved the fact was so!
Though I just made out to live—
Didn't grow.

Ate as much as any child,
Climbed and tumbled high and low;
Still my friends in pity smiled—
Didn't grow.
“He will take a start next year,”
Mother said, with half a tear;
Father growled, “Beyond a doubt,
Have to knead and stretch him out.”
(Being a baker, he compared
Body, if not head, to dough.)
Still the people downward stared—
Didn't grow!

Went to school and joined my class—
Toed a crack and joined a row;
Teacher croaked (the grim old ass):
“Couldn't you grow?”
Tried to join in sports and games—
Never got beyond their names.
Though ten winters I could see,
Four-year-olds would bully me;
Stretched and ate, and o'er and o'er
Swelled, frog-like, but 'twouldn't go;
More I undertook, the more
Didn't grow.

104

Fell in love—as who has not,
With love flitting to and fro?
But the same's a dreary lot,
Till you grow.
Daily had to stand and see
Angel skyward creep from me;
Smiling on me from on high,
Pity in her distant eye;
Begged of her to wait a while
Ere she took another beau;
Answered, with a pitying smile,
“Darling, grow!”

So the world kept leaving me;
Till folks said, “Why don't you grow
Up from small to greatest; see?
Join a show.”
Now I find that people pay
To see what they spurned away;
Now I think my purse would buy
Some who towered above me high;
She who “sacked” me as a lad,
Now's my dearest, tallest foe;
Married me, and says she's glad
Didn't grow.