The Jolly Tramp

View of the Sea at Sunset by Claude Monet

The Jolly Tramp

By Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

“Lady, if you will give me food,”
The jolly hobo said,
“I’ll paint your picture in the clouds,
Tonight when the sun grows red.”

“I am an artist from Heav’n,” said he,
With a twinkle in his eye;
And so I fed him buckwheat cakes
And gingerbread and pie.

A hoe was missing when he went,
Three silver forks were gone,
The patent sprinkler disappeared
From off our thirsty lawn.

But that night when the picture-clouds
Across the west trooped by,
“Oh come and look!” the children called
“There’s mother in the sky!”