... The cabin logs, with the bark still rough, And my mother who laughed at trifles, And the tall, lank visitors, brown as snuff, With their long, straight squirrel-rifles. I can hear them dance, like a foggy song, Through the deepest one of my slumbers, The fiddle squeaking the boots along And my father calling the numbers. The quick feet shaking the puncheon-floor, And the fiddle squealing and squealing, Till the dried herbs rattled above the door And the dust went up to the ceiling. There are children lucky from dawn till dusk, But never a child so lucky! For I cut my teeth on "Money Musk" In the Bloody Ground of Kentucky! When I grew as tall as the Indian corn, My father had little to lend me, But he gave me his great, old powder-horn And his woodsman's skill to befriend me. With a leather shirt to cover my back, And a redskin nose to unravel Each forest sign, I carried my pack As far as a scout could travel. Till I lost my boyhood and found my wife, A girl like a Salem clipper! A woman straight as a hunting-knife With eyes as bright as the Dipper! We cleared our camp where the buffalo feed, Unheard-of streams were our flagons; And I sowed my sons like the apple-seed On the trail of the Western wagons. They were right, tight boys, never sulky or slow, A fruitful, a goodly muster. The eldest died at the Alamo. The youngest fell with Custer. The letter that told it burned my hand. Yet we smiled and said, "So be it!" But I could not live when they fenced the land, For it broke my heart to see it. I saddled a red, unbroken colt And rode him into the day there; And he threw me down like a thunderbolt And rolled on my as I lay there. The hunter's whistle hummed in my ear As the city-men tried to move me, And I died in my boots like a pioneer With the whole wide sky above me...
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