, and I would go to Texas.

"When I returned home I felt a sort of cast down at the change that had
taken place in my fortunes, and sorrow, it is said, will make even an
oyster feel poetical. I never tried my hand at that sort of writing but
on this particular occasion such was my state of feeling, that I began
to fancy myself inspired; so I took pen in hand, and as usual I went
ahead. When I had got fairly through, my poetry looked as zigzag as a
worm-fence; the lines wouldn't tally no how; so I showed them to Peleg
Longfellow, who has a first-rate reputation with us for that sort of
writing, having some years ago made a carrier's address for the
Nashville Banner; and Peleg lopped of some lines, and stretched out
others; but I wish I may be shot if I don't rather think he has made it
worse than it was when I placed it in his hands. It being my first,
and, no doubt, last piece of poetry, I will print it in this place, as
it will serve to express my feelings on leaving my home, my neighbors,
and friends and country, for a strange land, as fully as I could in
plain prose.

"Farewell to the mountains whose mazes to me
Were more beautiful far than Eden could be;
No fruit was forbidden, but Nature had spread
Her bountiful board, and her children were fed.
The hills were our garners--our herds wildly grew
And Nature was shepherd and husbandman too.
I felt like a monarch, yet thought like a man,
As I thanked the Great Giver, and worshipped his plan.

"The home I forsake where my offspring arose;
The graves I forsake where my children repose.
The home I redeemed from the savage and wild;
The home I have loved as a father his child;
The corn that I planted, the fields that I cleared,
The flocks that I raised, and the cabin I reared;
The wife of my bosom--Farewell to ye all!
In the land of the stranger I rise or I fall.

"Farewell to my country! I fought for thee well,
When the savage rushed forth like the demons from hell
In peace or in war I have stood by thy side--
My country, for thee I have lived, would have died!
But I am cast off, my career now is run,
And I wander abroad like the prodigal son--
Where the wild savage roves, and the broad prairies spread,
The fallen--despised--will again go ahead."

A party of American adventurers, then called filibusters, had gone into
Texas, in the endeavor to wrest that immense and beautiful territory,
larger than the whole Empir