It’s eighteen four, It’s almost eighteen five. It’s twenty years Since I was captured when Burgoyne was whipped At Saratoga. Why, it’s almost twenty Since I became an American soldier. Now Here am I builder of this frontier fort, And its commander! Aged now forty-nine. But in my time a British soldier first, Now an American; first resident Of Ireland, then England, Maryland, Now living here. I see the wild geese fly To distant shores from distant shores and wonder How they endure such strangeness. But what’s that To man’s adventures, change of home, what’s that To my unsettled life? Why there’s La Salle: They say La Salle in sixteen seventy-one Was here, and now it’s almost eighteen five. And what’s your wild geese to La Salle! He’s born At Rouen, sails the seas, and travels over Some several thousand miles through Canada. Is here exploring portages and rivers. Ends up at last down by the Rio Grande, And dies almost alone half way around The world from where he started. There’s a man! May some one say of me: There was a man!... I’m lonely without Sarah, without James. Tom bring my pipe and that tobacco bag. Here place my note to Jacob Kingsbury There on the shelf--remember, to the captain When the “Tracy” comes. Draw, boys, up to the fire I’ll tell you what a wondrous dream I had, And woke with on my Sarah’s wedding day.... I had an uncle back in Ireland Who failed at everything except his Latin. He could spout Virgil till your head would ache. And when I was a boy he used to roll The Latin out, translating as he went: The ghost of Hector comes before Æneas, And warns him to leave Troy. His mother Venus Tells him to settle in another land! The Delphic oracle misunderstood, Æneas goes to Crete. He finds at last His ships are fired by the Trojan women, Great conflagration! Down he goes to hell, And then the Sibyl shows him what’s to be: What race of heroes shall descend from him, And how a city’s walls he shall up-build In founding Rome....