When Father Shook The Stove

'Twas not so many years ago,

Say, twenty-two or three,

When zero weather or below

Held many a thrill for me.

Then in my icy room I slept

A youngster's sweet repose,

And always on my form I kept

My flannel underclothes.

Then I was roused by sudden shock

Though still to sleep I strove,

I knew that it was seven o'clock

When father shook the stove.

I never heard him quit his bed

Or his alarm clock ring;

I never heard his gentle tread,

Or his attempts to sing;

The sun that found my window pane

On me was wholly lost,

Though many a sunbeam tried in vain

To penetrate the frost.

To human voice I never stirred,

But deeper down I dove

Beneath the covers, when I heard

My father shake the stove.

To-day it all comes back to me

And I can hear it still;

He seemed to take a special glee

In shaking with a will.

He flung the noisy dampers back,

Then rattled steel on steel,

Until the force of his attack

The building seemed to feel.

Though I'd a youngster's heavy eyes

All sleep from them he drove;

It seemed to me the dead must rise

When father shook the stove.

Now radiators thump and pound

And every room is warm,

And modern men new ways have found

To shield us from the storm.

The window panes are seldom glossed

The way they used to be;

The pictures left by old Jack Frost

Our children never see.

And now that he has gone to rest

In God's great slumber grove,

I often think those days were best

When father shook the stove.