When told about the Land of Morn
Above this world of Mammon,
He'd shout, with an emphatic scorn,
"Ah, gammon, gammon, gammon!"
He never lingered, like the bard,
To sniff at rose expanding.
"Me like," he said, "em cattle-yard --
Fine smell -- de smell of branding!"
The soul of man, I tried to show,
Went up beyond our vision.
"You ebber see dat fellow go?"
He asked in sheer derision.
In short, it soon occurred to me
This kid of six or seven,
Who wouldn't learn his A B C,
Was hardly ripe for heaven.
He never lost his appetite --
He bigger grew, and bigger;
And proved, with every inch of height,
A nigger is a nigger.
And, looking from this moment back,
I have a strong persuasion
That, after all, a finished black
Is not the "clean" -- Caucasian.
Dear Peter from my threshold went,
One morning in the body:
He "dropped" me, to oblige a gent --
A gent with spear and waddy!
He shelved me for a boomerang --
We never had a quarrel;
And, if a moral here doth hang,
Why let it hang -- the moral!
My mournful tale its course has run --
My Pete, when last I spied him,
Was eating 'possum underdone:
He had his gin beside him.
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