The Song of Solomon on Picnics

From The Detroit Times, June 4, 1913.
 By Berton Braley.
 

 Get busy, my love, my fair one, and come away.
 Gather together the bananas and the pies,
 Gather together the sandwiches and the jelly,
 And come away.
 For lo, the winter is past,
 The flies and the mosquitoes return
 And the voice of the picnicker is heard in the land.
 We will spread a table in the wilderness,
 We will eat burned potatoes and sandy bacon
 And call it good.
 We will say, “Lo, when was a home meal like to this!”
 And “Behold! What an appetite cometh of the open air!”
 Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples,
 For I am weary.
 I have packed this basket seven miles
 And the end is not yet.
 When shall we eat?
 When shall we lay a feast for the ants,
 And spread a banquet for the wasps and the caterpillars,
 And put our feet into the jam,
 And sit upon the blackberry pie?
 Lo, the burdock putteth forth her burrs
 And the dewberry her thorns,
 And the poison ivy lureth us with her leaves
 And we are not wise, but suffer for that we did not know.
 And we shall come home dusty and tired and declaring, “never again!”
 Yet, nevertheless and notwithstanding
 I bid you “come away”
 For the winter is past,
 The time of the gnat and the flea and the sandfly and the wasp and the bee and the hornet and the beetle and the grasshopper has come,
 And the voice of the picnicker is heard in the land!