(After Tennyson)
You ask me why, though ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Where all defaulters fill the fist
Ere sailing o’er the western seas.
It is a land where one may kill
With sober-sided freedom—bruise
And shoot and stab whome’er he choose,
And thugs may wreak their own sweet will.
A land of such misgovernment
That Justice here has not a frown,
And greed still broadens slowly down,
From Scavenger to President;
Where Faction gathers to a head,
And in his greasy, foulest thought
Sets law and order all at naught—
Goes in for anarchy instead.
If banded unions prosecute
Our unions like the deuce, and I’m
About to be had up for crime,
Or made to keep my clapper mute;
And Power should take from purse and till,
The gains that I appropriate
From every coffer of the State,
And I to fight have not the will,
Then waft me from the harbor south,
Wild winds! I seek a safer sky,
Where I can plunder still, and I
Can still shoot off my loaded mouth.