Poets have sung of the old-fashioned glories <br />The old-fashioned pictures that hung on the wall, <br />The old-fashioned people, the old-fashioned stories, <br />The old-fashioned fashions they love to recall; <br />The squeaky armchair that our grandmothers sat in, <br />The old-fashioned shelves with their old-fashioned books, <br />Immortalized have been in Saxon or Latin, <br />But I sing my song to the old-fashioned cooks. <br /> <br />O come, all ye gods! and give grace to my ballad, <br />Today I would sing as I ne'er sang before; <br />I 'm heartsick of dining on lettuce and salad, <br />And canned goods warmed over delight me no more. <br />I wish I could go once again to a dinner <br />That badn't been planned out of style sheets or books — <br />They may be all right for a sweet young beginner, <br />But they were not needed by old-fashioned cooks. <br /> <br />How well I remember the table cloth spotless, <br />The dishes that shone like the cheek of a child, <br />The jellies and relishes, O, there were not less <br />Than eight or nine kinds on the festive board piled. <br />There were no little dabs served to make you ungrateful, <br />They took it for granted, I guess, from your looks <br />That hunger was yours, and they gave you a plateful <br />Of viands most toothsome, those old-fashioned cooks! <br /> <br />You came to their tables to eat, not to chatter, <br />And heaped were the plates that they passed up to you; <br />In richest of gravies the meat in the platter <br />Was swimming, and side dishes never were few. <br />They fed us with plenty, not starved us with fashion, <br />They gave us enough and they cared not for looks, <br />And just now with me it is almost a passion — <br />I yearn for a dinner by old-fashioned cooks.<br /><br />Edgar Albert Guest<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-old-fashioned-cooks/
