Yes, times have changed since the early days and things are different now;
We used to tramp from dawn to dusk in the trail of a walking-plough,
And sow our grain from a canvas sack with a barrel-hoop for a mouth,
And we kind o' felt that Providence controlled the frost and drouth;
And in the harvest work we always neighbored forth and back,
And never thought of threshing till the grain was in the stack;
And hauled our wood in the winter-time, and smoked beside the fire,
And felt our lot was everything that reason could desire.
True, we had little money; our homes were plain and bare;
Maybe a box for a table, maybe a block for a chair;
Straw to repose our bodies at the end of the well-worked day,
And the stars saw through the knot-holes in the shingles where we lay;
Food that was mostly our raising, coffee from toasted wheat,
Cottonade for our Sunday suits, moccasins for our feet.
Hard were our frames with labor, knotted our hands with toil.
And we went to bed at twilight to save the price of oil.
Hardship? Perhaps, but old-timers look back at the early days,
Before we had come to realize that practical farming pays,
Back at the times we were all so poor that none of us thought of wealth,
Back at the times when we found content in industry and health,
Back at the nights in the shanty, when the wolves howled in the snow,
Back at the old sod stable and the cattle in a row,
Back at the distances still unmapped, at the trails that were still untrod,
When round about were the wastes of earth and overhead was God.
Yes, times have changed since the early days; farming is now an art;
They're coming for land in motor cars—but we came in a cart—
They're tearing the prairie with steam and gas, turning the rivers loose
To water the arid regions and bring them into use;
Binding the earth with railway lines, netting the world with wires,
Leaving the mail at our corner-posts, pampering our desires;
They show us that times are better, prove it a thousand ways,
But we think of the old-time comradeship and sigh for the early days.
