|
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 Kentuck, 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 the Tennessee.
|
|
|
|
Conrad lived in Ohio—a German he is, you know—
|
|
The house stood in broad cornfields, 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 the Tennessee.
|
|
|
|
Oh, for a sight of water, the shadowed slope of a hill!
|
|
Clouds that hang on the summit, a wind that never is 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 cornlands, 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!
|
|
|
|
Sudden I picked up baby, and ran to the pasture bar.
|
|
"Kentuck!" I called—"Kentucky!" She knew me ever so far!
|
|
I led her down the gully that turns off there to the right,
|
|
And tied her to the bushes; her head was just out of sight.
|
|
|
|
As I ran back to the log house, at once there came a sound—
|
|
The ring of hoofs, galloping hoofs, trembling over the ground—
|
|
Coming into the turnpike out from the White Woman Glen—
|
|
Morgan, Morgan the raider, and Morgan's terrible men.
|
|
|
|
As near they drew and nearer, my heart beat fast in alarm;
|
|
But still I stood in the doorway with baby on my arm.
|
|
They came, they passed; with spur and whip in haste they sped along—
|
|
Morgan, Morgan the raider, and his band, six hundred strong.
|
|
|
