Ballad of William Sycamore

And some are wrapped in the linen so fine
And some like a godling's scion
But I was cradled on the twigs of pine
Down a lonesome mountain line

I lost my boyhood and found my wife
A girl like a Salem clipper
A woman as 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 apple seed
On the trail of the Western wagons

They were right, tight boys, never sulky or slow
A fruitful, goodly muster
The eldest died at the Alamo
And the youngest fell with Custer

The letter that told it burned my hand
I smiled and said, "So be it!"
But I could not live when they fenced my land
Oh it broke my heart just to see it

I saddled the red, unbroken colt
I rode him into the day there
But he threw me down like a thunderbolt
And he rolled on me as I lay there

Now I lie in the heart of the fat, black soil
Like the seed of a prairie thistle
It has washed my bones in honey and oil
And it's picked 'em as clean as a whistle

And my youth returns, like the rains of Spring
My sons, like the wild geese flying
And I lie and I hear the meadowlark sing
And there's much content in my dying

Go play with the towns you have built out of blocks
The towns where you may have bound me
I'll sleep in the earth like a tired old fox
And my buffalo have found me