Poem: The Second-hand Shop

[Trinna D.]

The Second-hand Shop     By Edgar A. Guest

There's a little old man in a little old shop
That is cluttered with things from the cellar to top.
There is something of everything scattered about,
But whatever you want, he can ferret it out.
"Now just wait a minute," he says with a grin,
"I'll find what you're after. It's somewhere within."

This second-hand store of this little old man
I drop in to visit whenever I can,
For he in himself is a lovely antique,
And there's something about him so gentle and meek
That, just like the trinkets he sells, it appears
He has taken on charm with the dust of the years.

I chuckle to see him go shuffling around
Till the treasure he seeks in the rubbish is found,
And I fancy sometimes, as I sit there and chat
In that jumble of things, that man's mind is like that.
It's a second-hand shop filled with good stuff and cheap,
Gathered down through the years and all tossed in a heap.

Man gathers the good and the bad as he goes;
What he has, where it is, it is he only knows.
The stranger who sees but the rags and the bones,
Looks in without finding the good thoughts he owns;
But buried beneath all the rubbish that's vile,
May be fancies and dreams that are very worthwhile.