Taxes

By Edgar A. Guest

When they become due I don’t like them at all. Taxes look large be they ever so small Taxes are debts which I venture to say,

No man or no woman is happy to pay.

I grumble about them, as most of us do.

For it seems that with taxes I never am through.

But when I reflect on the city I love,

With its sewers below and its pavements above,

And its schools and its parks where children may play,

I can see what I get for the money I pay,

And I say to myself: “Little joy would we know

If we kept all our money and spent it alone”.

I couldn’t build streets and I couldn’t fight fire.

Policemen to guard us I never could hire. A water department I couldn’t maintain.

Instead of a city we’d still have a plain.

Then I look at the bill for the taxes they charge,

And I say to myself: “Well, that isn’t so large”.

I walk through a hospital thronged with the ill

And I find that it shrivels the size of my bill.

As in beauty and splendor my home city grows,

It is easy to see where my tax money goes.

And I say to myself: “If we lived hit and miss

And gave up our taxes, we couldn’t do this”.