David Crockett: His Life and AdventuresAbbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot)
History
David Crockett: His Life and Adventures
Abbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot)
Crockett, Davy, 1786-1836
"A few days ago I went to a meeting of my constituents. My appetite for
politics was at one time just about as sharp set as a saw-mill, but
late events have given me something of a surfeit, more than I could
well digest; still, habit, they say, is second natur, and so I went,
and gave them a piece of my mind touching 'the Government' and the
succession, by way of a codicil to what I have often said before.
"I told them, moreover, of my services, pretty straight up and down,
for a man may be allowed to speak on such subjects when others are
about to forget them; and I also told them of the manner in which I had
been knocked down and dragged out, and that I did not consider it a
fair fight anyhow they could fix it. I put the ingredients in the cup
pretty strong I tell you, and I concluded my speech by telling them
that I was done with politics for the present, and that they might all
go to hell, and I would go to Texas.
"When I returned home I felt a sort of cast down at the change that had
taken place in my fortunes, and sorrow, it is said, will make even an
oyster feel poetical. I never tried my hand at that sort of writing but
on this particular occasion such was my state of feeling, that I began
to fancy myself inspired; so I took pen in hand, and as usual I went
ahead. When I had got fairly through, my poetry looked as zigzag as a
worm-fence; the lines wouldn't tally no how; so I showed them to Peleg
Longfellow, who has a first-rate reputation with us for that sort of
writing, having some years ago made a carrier's address for the
Nashville Banner; and Peleg lopped of some lines, and stretched out
others; but I wish I may be shot if I don't rather think he has made it
worse than it was when I placed it in his hands. It being my first,
and, no doubt, last piece of poetry, I will print it in this place, as
it will serve to express my feelings on leaving my home, my neighbors,
and friends and country, for a strange land, as fully as I could in
plain prose.
"Farewell to the mountains whose mazes to me
Were more beautiful far than Eden could be;
No fruit was forbidden, but Nature had spread
Her bountiful board, and her children were fed.
The hills were our garners--our herds wildly grew
And Nature was shepherd and husbandman too.
I felt like a monarch, yet thought like a man,
As I thanked the Great Giver, and worshipped his plan.
"The home I forsake where my offspring arose;
The graves I forsake where my children repose.
The home I redeemed from the savage and wild;
The home I have loved as a father his child;
The corn that I planted, the fields that I cleared,
The flocks that I raised, and the cabin I reared;
The wife of my bosom--Farewell to ye all!
In the land of the stranger I rise or I fall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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