The Potato (Elizabeth Field Hubbard)

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• (Posted 2023-10-30)  CPDL #76827:     

Editor: David Anderson (submitted 2023-10-30).   Score information: Letter, 12 pages, 769 kB   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: The Potato
Composer: Elizabeth Field Hubbard
Lyricist: Thomas Moore
Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 1882 Thomas W. Hubbard
Description: 

Original text and translations

English text

I’m a careless potato, and heed not a pin
How into existence I came;
If they planted me drill ways, or dibbled me in,
To me ’tis exactly the same.
The peas and the beans may more loftily tower,
But why should I bend me to them?
Defiance I nod with my beautiful flower,
When the earth is hoed up to my stem.

Oh! ’tis not on my flower alone I rely,
Since beauty is fleeting and vain;
But when in appearance I languish and die,
My real attractions remain.
When the beans and the peas are all gather’d and gone,
When spinach lies wither’d and gone,
’Tis then, yes, ’tis then, the potato alone
Is in its maturity found.

The cabbage will stand through the winter I know,
And the white-headed broccoli too,
Like a miniature Alp, with its crowning of snow,
The autumn will bravely go through:
But oh! if you cut them they fall to decay,
Their usefulness quickly is past;
While skillfully stow your potato away,
Its virtue remains to the last.