The Lovesick Scarecrow is featured in Herford’s whimsical collection, The Bashful Earthquake & Other Fables and Verses, published in 1898.
The Lovesick Scarecrow title
A scarecrow in a field of corn,
A thing of tatters all forlorn,
Once felt the influence of Spring
And fell in love—a foolish thing,
And most particularly so
In his case—for he loved a crow!
“Alack-a-day! it’s wrong, I know,
It’s wrong for me to love a crow;
An all-wise man created me
To scare the crows away,” cried he;
“And though the music of her ‘Caw’
Thrills through and through this heart of straw,
“My passion I must put away
And do my duty, come what may!
Yet oh, the cruelty of fate!
I fear she doth reciprocate
My love, for oft at dusk I hear
Her in my cornfield hovering near.
“And once I dreamt—oh, vision blest!
That she alighted on my breast.
’T is very, very hard, I know,
But all-wise man decreed it so.”
He cried and flung his arm in air,
The very picture of despair.
Poor Scarecrow, if he could but know!
Even now his lady-love, the Crow,
Sits in a branch, just out of sight,
With her good husband, waiting night,
To pluck from out his sleeping breast
His heart of straw to line her nest.
