would anyone have any idea where I could find the rest of this poem ? all I can remember is the good and the bad that a man would do will come back to him as the chickens come home to roost

Chickens Come Home to Roost

You may take the world as it comes and it goes
And you will be sure to find
That fate will square the account she owes
Whoever comes out behind.
And all things bad that a man has done
By whatsoever induced
Return at last to him one by one,
As the chickens come home to roost.

You may scrape and toiland pinch and save
While your hoarded wealth expands
Till the cold, dark shadow of the grave
Is nearing our life’s last sands;
You will find your balancesstruck some night,
And you’ll find your hoard reduced,
You’ll view your life in another light,
When the chickens come home to roost.

Sow as you will, there’s a time to reap,
For the good and the bad as well,
And conscience, whether we wake or sleep,
Is either heaven or hell
And every wrong will find its place
And every passion loosed
Drifts back and meetsyou face to face,
When the chickens come home to roost.

Whether you’re over or under the sod,
The result will be the same;
You cannot escape the hand of God;
You must bear your sin or shame.
No matter what’s carved on a marble slab
When the items are produced,
You’ll find that the Lord was keeping tab,
And that chickens come home to roost.

[208.56.82.151].

>Whether you’re over or under the sod,

Oh, my. Which chickens are we discussing here?

"All my chickens have come home to roost at last" is a quote from some poem, but what or who?

Chickens will come home to roost, one's - one's (misguided) actions will recoil on oneself
This is the modern version, sometimes in the shortened form come home to roost, of the proverbial saying 'Curses, like chickens, come home to roost' - i.e. as automatically as chickens come back to the henhouse at night in order to perch, the evil you wish on somebody in a curse will come back to trouble you. The actual words are usually attributed to Robert Southey (1774-1843) who wrote in the motto to his long poem The Curse of Kehama (1810) 'Curses are like young chickens; they always come home to roost'. The idea, however, though differently expressed, occurs as early as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in about 1387.




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/14/2006 02:04PM by Linda.

Linda, I get nothing from the link above also a dead link from Henry's post. Bartlett's Quotations lists this: [www.bartleby.com]
I could find nothing online to confirm or deny the link to Chaucer.

Les



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/14/2006 01:15PM by lg.

Both links worked for me, but I edited out the link on my post because it's no use if it's not reliable.