November Cotton Flower

Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear

Beauty so sudden for that that time of year

Failed in its function as the autumn rake

Drouth fighting soil had caused the soil to take

All water from the streams; dead birds were found

In wells a hundred feet below the ground

Boll-weevil's coming, and the winter's cold

Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old

Such was the season when the flower bloomed

Old folks were startled, and it soon assumed

Significance. Superstition saw

Something it had never seen before

And cotton, scarce as any southern snow

Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow