For the zest for life he has not lost the drive <br />Many droughts and hard Seasons he has had to survive <br />His straggly hair white as new fallen snow <br />The passing of time has left him walking slow. <br /> <br />Five times a grandfather thanks to his sole offspring his son <br />Who this year in February turned forty one <br />A builder he lives in the suburbs with his school going children and wife <br />Rural living and farming not his sort of life. <br /> <br />Last Summer the old farmer's wife passed away <br />He lives on his own in the farm-house today <br />She was sixty nine one year younger than he <br />Their forty one years of marriage was one of harmony. <br /> <br />In his early sevenities the years on him beginning to tell <br />The three hundred acres farm will be his son's for to sell <br />But he intends to live in his farm house and die there as a very old man <br />And to tend to his sheep and his cattle for as long as he can.<br /><br />Francis Duggan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-old-farmer-3/
