An Emigrant

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.