Fertile Lands and Mammoth Cheese

In barren district you may meet
Small fertile spot doth grow fine wheat,
There you may find the choicest fruits,
And great, round, smooth and solid roots.

But in conditions such as these
You cannot make a mammoth cheese,
Which will weigh eight thousand pounds,
But where large fertile farms abounds.

Big cheese is synonymous name,
With fertile district of the Thame,
Here dairy system’s understood,
And they are made both large and good.

Where this text comes from

First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L12.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “Fertile Lands and Mammoth Cheese.” First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/fertile-lands-and-mammoth-cheese/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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