You ask me why, though ill at ease, AN EMIGRANT Within this region I subsist, Where honor's dead, and law is hissed, You ask me why, though ill at ease,. And all men pillage as they please. Within this region I subsist Where all defaulters fill the fist Ere sialing o'er the western seas. It is the land where freemen kill In warm debate their party foes; It is a land where one may kill The land where judges come to blows With sober-sided freedom-?? - bruise And speak the things that make us ill; And shoot and stab wome'er he choose, And thugs may wreak their own sweet will. A land of base expedient; A land of such misgovernment A land where gold can justice drown; That Justice here has not a frown, Where Freedom's chains are handed down And greed still broadens slowly down, From President to President; From Scavenger to President; Where Faction gathers to a head, Where factions wrangle for the bread And in his greasy, foulest thought Of honest men; where, fearing naught, Sets law and order all at naught-?? - Accurst monopolies have caught Goes in for anarchy instead. The people in the nets they spread; If banded unions prosecute Our unions like the deuce, and I'm Where branded convicts execute About to be had up for crime, The laws that in a better time Or made to keep my clapper mute; They broke, and every kind of crime Stalks unashamed and resolute. And Power should take from purse and till, The gains that I appropriate From every coffer of the State, Should honor e'er possess the land, And I to fight have not the will, And patriots control the State, And Justice rise, divine with hate, Then waft me from the harbor south, To choke the politician band, Wild winds! I seek a safer sky, Where I can plunder still, and I Can still shoot off my loaded mouth. O waft me from the harbor forth, Wild winds. I'll see Alaska's sky. Here 'twill have grown too warm, and I Will run for office in the North. |