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.