You can fool all the world with a yarn such as mine, but you can’t tell a lie to your Soul.
I have spit on the doors of their law-makin’ shops, I have spit an’ have laffed at the law;
I have drunk with their sheriffs an’ played with their cops, with my life as the stake in the draw.
I have traveled their streets in the glare of the sun, while the he-hounds were hot on the track—
I have shaken them all, shaken all but the one, but the one thet will never turn back.
Fer the world may fergit, er the world may not know, er the world it may know an’ not care,
But ferever beside me wherever I go still another walks close who was there.
Yes, the deed may be done an’ the deed may be hid, may be hid by the snows an’ the sod,
But the thing thet I planned an’ the thing thet I did one witness will whisper to God.
They know me back home as a man who is dead an’ who passed in his checks as he should,