Jocko, Jocko, climb a pole,
Jocko climb a tree,
Jocko, Jocko, tip your cap,
And make a bow to me.
KENTUCKY BELLE.
Summer of 'sixty-three, sir, and Conrad was gone away--
Gone to the county-town, sir, to sell our first load of hay--
We lived in the log-house yonder, poor as ever you've seen;
Roschen there was a baby, and I was only nineteen.
Conrad, he took the oxen, but he left Kentucky Belle;
How much we thought of Kentucky, I couldn't begin to tell--
Came from the Blue-Grass country; my father gave her to me
When I rode north with Conrad, away from Tennessee.
Conrad lived in Ohio--a German he is, you know--
The house stood in broad corn-fields, stretching on, row after
row;
The old folks made me welcome; they were kind as kind could be
But I kept longing, longing, for the hills of Tennessee.
O, for a sight of water, the shadowed slope of a hill!
Clouds that hang on the summit, a wind that is never still
But the level land went stretching away to meet the sky--
Never a rise, from north to south, to rest the weary eye!
From east to west, no river to shine out under the moon,
Nothing to make a shadow in the yellow afternoon;
Only the breathless sunshine, as I looked out, all forlorn;
Only the "rustle, rustle," as I walked among the corn.
When I fell sick with pining, we didn't wait any more,
But moved away from the corn-lands out to this river shore--
The Tuscarawas it's called, sir--off there's a hill, you see--
And now I've grown to like it next best to the Tennessee.
I was at work that morning. Some one came riding like mad
Over the bridge and up the road--Farmer Rouf's little lad;
Bareback he rode; he had no hat; he hardly stopped to say;
"Morgan's men are coming, Frau; they're galloping on this way;
"I'm sent to warn the neighbors. He isn't a mile behind;
He sweeps up all the horses--every horse that he can find;
Morgan, Morgan, the raider, and Morgan's terrible men,
With bowie-knives and pistols, are galloping up the glen."
The lad rode down the valley, and I stood still at the door;
The baby laughed and prattled, playing with spools on the floor;
Kentuck was out in the pasture; Conrad, my man, was gone;
Nearer, nearer, Morgan's men were galloping, galloping on!
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