O weary mothers, mixing dough,
Don’t you wish that food would grow?
Your lips would smile, I know to see
A cookie bush or a pancake tree.
No hurry, no worry, no boiling pot;
No waiting to get the oven hot;
But you could send your child to see
If the pies had baked on the cherry tree.
A beefsteak bush would be quite fine;
Bread be plucked from its tender vine;
A sponge-cake plant our pet would be,
WE’d read and sew ‘neath the muffin tree.
From a Good Housekeeping magazine, circa late 1800s. No author was given except ‘Household’