SHOVELING COAL

SHOVELING coal, shoveling coal, into the furnace’s crater-like hole!

Thus goes the coin we so wearily earn, into the furnace to sizzle and

burn; thus it’s converted to ashes and smoke, and we keep shoveling,

weeping, and broke. Oh, it’s a labor that tortures the soul, shoveling

coal, shoveling coal! “The house,” says the wife, “is as cold as a

barn,” so I must emigrate, muttering “darn,” down to the furnace, the

which I must feed; it is a glutton, a demon of greed! Into its cavern I

throw a large load—there goes the money I got for an ode! There goes the

check that I got for a pome, boosting the joys of an evening at home!

There goes the price of full many a scroll, shoveling coal, shoveling

coal! Things that I need I’m not able to buy, I have shut down on the

cake and the pie; most of my jewels are lying in soak, gone is the money

for ashes and smoke; all I can earn, all the long winter through, goes

in the furnace and then up the flue. Still says the frau, “It’s as cold

as a floe, up in the Arctic where polar bears grow.” So all my song is

of sorrow and dole, shoveling coal, shoveling coal!

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