Many aud many a year has gone
Since I was cleared by Joe,
Who plowed me up and planted corn,
To see it shoot and grow.
He built an old Virginia fence
Out there where the wires run;
And worked, he said, in self-defense,
From sunny sun to sun.
He planted peas between the rows,
And pumpkins here and there;
And where that patch of briar grows
He set out deep the pear.
And further on the apple tree,
And the peach orchard there;
With worthy pride embellished me
With fruit trees ev'rywhere.
And placed around the orchard, sir,
Were hives and hives of bees;
In the piggery the hogs were;
In the pasture, the beeves.
And fiery steeds, and all that go
To make your farm a home;
But that which was most prized by Joe
Was his broad fertile loam.
He kept me fertilized and tiled,
With ditches deep and wide,
And never let the floods run wild,
Nor stream it down my side.
And where the gullies would have been,
Near by he planted trees;
Then there the grass grew bright and green,
And there would play the breeze.
But Joe has long since passed away,
And others master here;
Yet since that sad and gloomy day
I've lordless been and drear.
And where was once the verdant knoll,
Gullies are yawning wide;
And when it rains the waters roll
In torrents down my side.
Here in the flats the briars grow,
The thistles on the hills;
And where the gin wheels used to go
Are a few rotten sills.
The gentleman that's master now
Says farming does not pay;
He neither drives nor holds the plow,
And values not his clay.
When the master of this place was Joe
And cotton king of crops,
I've seen the white and red blooms blow
On miles of my sunny tops.
And in the fall the fleecy stuff
Would fill the earth like snow,
The harvesters would cry enough,
And farming it paid Joe.