His hair is gray, and his wrinkled face
Is marked by the fingers of Time,
And his back is bent as he shovels and digs,
Or mixes the water and lime.
But there's an hour that comes each day
When care lifts her darkening veil,
And he sits in the shade of a near-by tree
To open his dinner pail.

It isn't the food he sees in it
Which brings the smile to his face;
It isn't the sandwiches, coffee or pie
That he takes from their regular place;
It isn't the dinner that makes his eyes
Grow dim for a moment and fail;
It's a flower that's stuck in the battered cup,
That hangs on the old dinner pail.

His hands are calloused and dirty and red,
Yet he lifts it with tender care,
And kisses it clumsily, if there is none
Close by, to smile and to stare
And he sees, with the eyes of a lover, the wife
Of his youth, whose love does not fail,
She sends every day, with his noon-day meal,
A rose on the old dinner pail.

And when he has finished the frugal meal
He takes up his tools again,
While a smile that is tender lurks in the face
Where worry and wrinkles have been.
In the torn buttonhole of his faded old shirt
He places the blossom frail;
And wears it there, like a true knight of old—
The rose from the old dinner pail.