Taxes ~ “The People’s Poet”

Last updated on April 14, 2025

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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.”

By “The People’s Poet”
Edgar Guest

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