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A Birthday Poem 
By N. B. Bacon

I hold my pen in hand to write
Whatever my morning muse may indict,
To tell the number of my by-gone years
In this double life of hopes and fears.

I count the milestones in my pilgrimage,
And I number them as years of my age;
Number ninety-seven I've past today,
On my journey in life's uneven way.

Born on the nineteenth day of December,
My dear parents told me to remember,
The year seventeen hundred ninety-nine;
My record here is true as a plumb line.

Born of religious, healthy parentage,
I live to write this brief historic page;
Born without a will or wish of my own,
And helpless into life's history thrown.

To work out life's mission as best I could
In my chosen way, evil or good;
When I was past seventeen years of age
My occupation was driving mail stage.

I was a good driver, the people said,
My horses in a good rig and well fed;
I took good care of my team day and night,
But my morals went like a falling kite.

Silence my tell-tale pen; be good and kind;
Write not the foible of my youthful mind,
For in God's impartial free grace I've found
A plaster spread, big as the moral wound.

Kind reader, we are fortunate indeed,
That I must close my poem now with speed,
For at 10 a.m. this auspicious day
My muse has spread its wings and flew away.

No. 1109, W. 19th St., Des Moines, Iowa, Dec. 19th 1896.

©2022 by The Noah B. Bacon Poetry Project. 

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