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Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs,
the mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in
the ground,
Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by
the hole in the frozen surface,
The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the
squatter strikes deep with his axe,
Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cotton-
wood or pekan-trees,
Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river,
or through those drained by the Tennessee, or
through those of the Arkansaw,
Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chatta-
hooche or Altamahaw,
Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and
great-grandsons around them,
In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and
trappers after their day's sport,
The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for
their time,
The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young
husband sleeps by his wife;
And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend
outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am.

78.I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the
wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with
the stuff that is fine,