Classic Poem

I ' M only four-score years, my sons, and a few
To fill the measure up. And so I shouldn't
Be shut here like an old hound by the fire
To dream of deeds I still have wind to do.
Maybe I have performed enough for one man;
For there's Kentucky cut from the wilderness.
And sewed fast to the States by law and order—
Which I 'm not saying isn't good for them
Who like pullin' in harness with their neighbours.
But I keep seein' trails—runnin' to westward
And northwest—Indian-footed trails
That no white man has ever pierced an eye through,
And beyond them are prairie lands and forests
Which settlers comin' after me could scalp
And sell, if silver is the game they 're seekin',
And the Almighty means my eyes to see them,
Else He 'd have made my sight dim and rheumy
By now—and where 's the deer or bear that gambols
Before my gun and goes away to say so?

It 's kind of shiftless maybe, I 'll allow,
To want to keep always beyond the settlements
Not in them; ten near families is too many.
But the Lord never meant the plough to be
My instrument: I get to the end of a furrow
And there 's the wilderness waitin', all creation,
And I just have to find a path across it—
As your ma, there, knows; though I never could tell her
The reason, till they took Kentucky in.
And then I saw that the cunnin' to be wise
With animals and savages was more
Than love of powder and shot; and that God used
My axe to hew a realm out. And there 's more realms
Yet to be hewed—and God 's grindin' the axes,
I 'll tell you that. For, young Lewis and Clark,
Sons of my two old friends, are comin' to-morrow
With unblazed trails of the Northwest in their eyes;
And who knows but that land 's as big as Kentucky
And Illinois too; and that they 're comin'
For more than to look at an old hound by the fire?
There 's one run in me yet; and if I died
Somewhere upon a far new trail with them,
There 's coffin-board saved—and I 'd sleep better
Unless your ma, this time, wouldn't be willin'
To pack my kit and draw the latch of the door.

She won't, eh? Then it 's dodderin' here, I reckon,
And dreamin'. Put on a fresh log, and let be.
Young Lewis and Clark will need a-many like me, though,
Before they hew that Northwest into the world.