The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky: To the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. — John Shaqi
The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky: To the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County.Potts, Eugenia Dunlap
History
The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky: To the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County.
Potts, Eugenia Dunlap
Lancaster (Ky.) -- History -- Poetry
Our renowned Judge William Owsley,
Representative and jurist,
Lawyer, legislator, ruler,
Has a record full of glory,
From his youth to his departure
From the stage of human striving.
Boyle and Mills and Owsley, colleagues,
With George Robertson, associate,
In the "Old Court" revolution,
Which endangered brave Kentucky
With dark anarchy and ruin,
Steered the state-craft o'er the breakers,
Stood unshaken 'mid the billows,
Saved the honored Constitution
From fierce partisans and wranglers.
Owsley's firm administration,
From the bench and bar judicial,
In the governor's chair of power,
Comes in heraldry unsullied,
On the banner of the contest,
Of the pen and diction contest,
Mightier than the sword of battle.
He reduced the annual bugbear,
The state debt, so long amassing,
And devoted all his efforts
To the Commonwealth's advantage.
In eighteen hundred two and sixty,
He laid down his useful manhood,
In the dust of lasting greatness,
At his home in Boyle county.
Long his psalm of life be chanted,
Long his earnest work remembered,
Long the sand retain his footprints,
Dust of dust, to earth returning.
R. P. Letcher was a lawyer,
In his native county, Garrard,
In the city of Lancaster,
Till the year of eighteen forty,
When he rose up by election
To the Governor's high office.
Advocate and bold defender
Of the popular Whig party,
He was prominent in Congress,
In Kentucky Legislature,
Ruled the district of Arkansas,
Went to Mexico in office,
Served at home and foreign stations.
Full of genial, pleasant humor,
Anecdote and social temper,
He left many mourning comrades,
When he ended all his labors
At his residence in Frankfort,
Eighteen hundred one and sixty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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