Lines to a Garden Hose

Sprinkle, sprinkle, little hose
(You can't help it, I suppose)
The unsodded, fruitful dirt
Sodden with thy sudden squirt!

Squirt and sprinkle, gentle hose,
Drowning less torrential woes;
Giving merry worms their drink,
Softly squirtle, sweetly sprink!

As in other, larger floods
Rainbows glint thy fertile muds,
So, assured of final calm,
Through thy nozzle pour thy balm!

Make the sidewalk and the street
Moist for parched and weary feet;
Keep thy rivulets a-flow;
Tripping each fantastic toe;

Seek thy brethren on the limb,
Fetching them into the swim;
Till , as each doth pass the fence
Scattering his eloquence,

Uttereth each a single note,
Like thee, from his liquid throat,
And the idlest, as she goes,
Darns the customary hose!

Then, thy simple duty done,
Quit, as erstwhile quits the sun,
With the other hoes to bed,
Coiling in thy shadowy shed!

Gardeners proclaim thy praise,
Children love thy childlike ways:
May we, like them, learn from thee
Irresponsibility!

Anonymous
The Humbler Poets (second series): A Collection of Newspaper and Periodical Verse 1885-1910 by Wallace and Frances Rice (1910, NY reprinted 1972)