The Old Woodchuck

There is a queer old woodchuck, 
     I meet on the briery flat, 
And he's fashioned on the model 
     Of an aldermanic cat;
You would laugh to see him waddle,
     He is so dumpy and fat.

His legs are short and crooked, 
     His hair is long and grey, 
And he wallows through the clover 
     In a serious-comical way;
His tastes are fine, moreover,—
     He revels in "new-mown" hay.

He picks my beans for his dinner 
     As if they were his, not mine, 
And before my pumpkins blossom
     He nibbles every vine;
And my melons, how he gnaws 'em 
     Oh, yes; his tastes are fine!

If a step betrays my coming
     His nose is straight in the air;
He sits up on his haunches
     Like a little, shaggy, bear,
And he snuffs and looks, —then launches 
     Away to his hidden lair.

And oh, what a house is Chuckie's, 
     All cellar, dark and deep!
Two doors, but never a window 
     Where a ray of light can peep;
And his cubs, as Lapp and Finn do, 
     In the wintry darkness sleep.

His crooked teeth are his sickle
     To reap where he does not sow;
With his hind-feet for a shore.
     And his fore-feet for a hoe, 
He digs his cavernous hove!
     Where the sweetest clovers grow.

Poor fellow! I know I shall lose him 
     In the midst of his happy days:
For in farming he only gathers
     The harvest that others raise,—
And all his gray forefathers
     Had just his taking ways!