The Ballad of William Sycamore - Tom Russell

My father was a mountaineer

His fist was a knotty hammer

He was quick on his feet like a runnin' deer

And he spoke with a Yankee stammer

And some are wrapped in linen fine

And some like a godling’s scion

But I was cradled on twigs of pine

In the skin of a mountain lion

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 wild geese flying

And I lie and I hear the meadowlark sing

And there’s much content in my dying

Go play with the town you have built out of blocks

The towns where you may have bound me

I sleep in the earth like a tired old fox

And my buffalo have found me

I sleep in the earth like a tired old fox,

And my buffalo have found me